


10-3: Maneater

by jcrowquill



Series: Spare the Angels [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Backseat sex, Case Fic, Hell Flashbacks, Leviathans, M/M, PTSD, Sam Ships It, adoring cas, cas sneaks in, dean says those three words, light descriptions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:00:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1485598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jcrowquill/pseuds/jcrowquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean head east to New Hampshire to look into an Abaddon-related massacre and find some hold outs from the rise of Dick.  Arakiel's words about remnants of grace lingering in both brothers lead to some questionable choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 3 in this Season 10 AU. Please read the other fics in this series first, or I'm afraid this will make no sense. :)

It's been awhile since the Winchesters took off on their own, without any of their newly extended family.  Dean is surprised by how easy it is to fall into old rhythms, how comfortable it is to lazily converse with his brother when something catches their attention, and how rewarding it is to sing with the radio without a critical back seat audience.  It's different now than it was when they were younger; they trade off more often and they chat more comfortably.  There's a far greater equity in their interactions.  Dean is obviously the big brother, but he hands off control less grudgingly and Sam takes it less desperately.

They've been on the road for almost twelve hours after a late start and Sam is beginning to think that Dean intends to drive all night.  He can almost hear Dean's argument without even making his own - _You really wanna pay a motel for a full night when we're only gonna be there like 8 hours?_

He just sighs and resettles, glancing at the glowing numbers on the dash that proclaim the time as just past 1 am.  In college, he’d had a favorite time of day - 11:30 pm, when he’d cleared his responsibilities for the day but wasn’t tired enough to sleep.  It was when he’d watch movies with Jess, pointlessly surf the internet and watch stupid videos, or actually read something for pleasure.  If Dean was going to call, that was around when he’d usually be able to steal five minutes without their dad finding out.  If he read between the lines and waded through the monster stories, he could tell that Dean missed him but that he was getting by.  He used to worry sometimes that he wouldn’t, that he’d either get killed or that he would just shut down completely under the weight of John Winchester's expectations.  Those calls and those quiet, domestic nights were everything he thought he wanted at that point.  Now, most times of day are the same and 11:30 is usually prime time for hunting scary night creatures.  Strange to think 11:30 was already over an hour and a half ago.  Sighing quietly, he wishes that he was spending this particular 1 am with Gadreel reading in bed beside him.  As it is, on the road in the middle of nowhere, he figures that might as well get an hour or two of sleep until it's his turn to drive.

They're on their way to New Hampshire, where something recently slaughtered an entire block's worth of people. According to the one survivor who witnessed the massacre, there was only one attacker - "a woman who wasn't a woman all the time," someone who seemed to alternate between being a smoldering ginger sex goddess and a terrible beast with multiple smoking mouths and claws and rows and rows of very sharp teeth.  The news wrote the account off as being warped by trauma, but the composite sketch of the human side of the monstrosity looks an awful lot like Abaddon and there's no denying that there are a lot of people whose insides are now their outsides.

Dean wants to get there as quickly as possible and Sam is fine with it.  He's actually glad not to have Allison Wild, their dubious stray, in the back seat for the trip east.  They were supposed to drop her in Boston, but she'd woken up sick; apparently being run ragged by an angel for a week had taken a physical toll on her, and Dean had loudly stated that he was in no mood to have a college kid horking all over his car.  Sam was more than fine with popping her on a bus as soon as she was fit for to travel and sending that bit of their Arakiel adventure on its way.

He wakes up automatically when Dean kills the engine in the parking lot of a seedy roadside motel.  He's not even sure what state they're in, but looking out the window he sees snow and can only be thankful for the heavy coat he'd tossed in the back seat that morning.  He sits up groggily and gropes blindly for their coats, managing to mumble, "Stopping for the night?"

Dean nods and says slightly gruffly, "Yeah, i mean I dunno what we're gonna find and I kinda feel like we shouldn't be running on fumes for whatever it is."

Sam nods, handing Dean his jacket before struggling into his own.  When he opens the door, the icy air is bracing, making his shoulders hunch reflexively against the wind.  He shivers miserably as he stomps after his brother to the office.

A few minutes later, they're checked in to a quiet double at the far end of the block of rooms.  The decor and level of cleanliness is just about what Sam expected from the condition of the office lobby, though mercifully there is no lingering stink of stale cigarettes.  

Dean is fairly quiet as he goes through his nightly motel routine.  He paces back and forth across the room as he brushes his teeth, giving Sam opportunity to use the bathroom and clean up as well.  They have the timing down perfectly so that Dean is ready to spit just as Sam emerges.  

"Figure we can be on the road by 9, grab breakfast an hour or so after that if we pass something that looks good.  Worst case scenario, there's always the packaged crap at Gas n' Go," Dean says with a laugh as he sets the alarm on the bedside table.  Even though they could both set alarms on their respective cell phones, there's something traditional and mandatory about using the motel-provided alarm or wake up call service.

Sam makes a face at the breakfast options, but figures he can probably grab a cup of yogurt and a banana or something.  Most convenience stores had that as a bare minimum as a means of pretending that they provided "healthy options."  He slides under the scratchy assortment of blankets, noting with relief that they smell freshly laundered and have a recognizable just-washed stiffness.  

"Yeah... Where are we, anyway?"

"Elkhart, Indiana," Dean replies as he climbs under the blankets wearily.  

They're both quiet again for a moment, just appreciating that there's nothing horrible going on in the neighboring room and minimal sound rumbling off of the nearby highway.  

"Y'know, I think the thing that's bugging me is that Abaddon didn't even try to hide what's going on," Dean comments, staring at the ceiling, "I mean, most demons, even friggin' Lillith, make their nasty crap look like something else.  It's freaking ballzy, man, like she's got nothing to be afraid of."

Sam nods thoughtfully, "Well, for what it's worth, I don't even know what can kill her.  Like by now she's been dismembered, burned, mutilated, and exorcised and all it's done is piss her off."

"Yeah."

"Wonder if Cas knows anything ‘bout it.  I mean, he seemed to know how knights of hell are made."

"And that's a whole lot of fuck no," Dean says aloud, recalling the super-sized "beast food" demons that they had fought during _Operation: Jailbreak Mrs. Tran_.

"Yeah... Guess we can ask him tomorrow."

His older brother nods, leaning up on his elbow to reach for the lamp, "Yeah, if he's not busy with angel shit, sure.  Anyway, g'night."

"Night."

They both settle in, though neither falls asleep immediately despite exhaustion. They both still feel a bit like talking, ill at ease with the distinctive "end of times" vibe coming off of this whole mess, but the lights are out.  

"Lights out" had been their military father's evening order, which basically meant "Shut up and sleep."  Otherwise, his two giggly little boys would stay up whispering and trying to secretly play with flashlights under the covers. When they were left on their own later, they sometimes broke the rule and talked for hours in the dark, but by and large it became part of the routine that made them feel settled on the road even as adults.  Lights out, no talking, no thinking, no remembering.

Dean feels a warm, solid weight suddenly beside him in the bed and draws a stiff, sharp breath in surprise that fills his nose with the smell of lightning, ozone, and clean angel.  He grits his teeth and tries to let the air out naturally, rather than as profanity or a long-suffering sigh.

Castiel, angel of the freaking Lord, curls closer to him under the covers, pressing his cheek against his shoulder comfortably.

"You okay?" Sam asks.  Hearing Dean start is a good excuse to break the silence.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean replies, flustered.  He scrambles for an excuse for why he had practically knocked the headboard into the wall when he'd jerked in surprise. "Just y'know how it is when you're about to fall asleep and you feel like you're falling for a sec?  That."

To his annoyance, he can feel Castiel's mouth curl into a smile where it is pressed against his shirt sleeve.  _That little shit_ he thinks as his slides his fingers into the angel's short, thick hair and gives a sharp little tug in retribution.  Cas hasn't snuck into bed with him in years.  He should have angel-warded the damn room.

Sam can tell that Dean's lying, which makes him smirk to himself.  There's only one thing that would startle Dean that way without it leading to violence and it is certainly something he'd lie about.

"Hey Cas, I have a question," he says smoothly, smiling to himself in the dark.

"Cas isn't-" Dean objects sharply as his lover answers blithely, "What is it?"

"Knew it," Sam says triumphantly, sitting up to turn on the light again.  

"I can't believe you fell for that," Dean mutters, red-faced and looking at no one as he cuffs the angel lightly in the back of the head.  

Sam glances over to see the family guardian in question curled comfortably against his brother's side, draped half across him like a self- important house cat.  He is fully dressed, trenchcoat and all, which in tandem with Dean's obvious, overblown embarrassment keeps it comical rather than awkward. His bright eyes are alert and awake, his dark hair mussed, as he sits up enough to lean his chin on Dean's chest.

"And you're a _dick_ ," Dean informs Sam irritably.

"I actually do have a legitimate question," Sam says with a grin, absolutely tickled to have finally caught his brother.  

"Yeah, great.  Jackass in a trenchcoat is here taking up space, might as well take advantage."

Castiel knows better than to be offended by Dean's remark.  He feels foolish to have been caught unaware by such a simple trick, but something in him never expects things like that from Sam.  He also knows that he's breaking about a dozen of Dean's rules for How To Act Like We Are Not Dating or Screwing or Being Anything Other Than Two Completely Straight Guys Who Are Kinda Friends, but at the moment he is comfortable where he has molded himself warmly to the elder Winchester's side and has no intention of leaving unless Dean bodily removes him with an angel banishing sigil.

"What is it?" he asks.

"How do you kill a Knight of Hell?" Sam asks, propping himself up on his elbow.

"It's rather difficult," Cas admits mildly, his eyes going slightly distant as he recalls, "They can only be killed by Lucifer himself or one with his mark, the Mark of Cain."

"So how d'we get that?" Dean asks.

The angel spares him a look, "You don't.  Perhaps you missed when I said that it is the mark of Lucifer, the mark of the damned."

Dean raises his eyebrows challengingly at his lover, but backs down at the heat in his cool blue eyes.  Sometimes he forgets that his mild-mannered, socially awkward companion is basically lightning in a bottle; other times (like now), probably due to some trick he can perform at will, it's impossible to look into his eyes without seeing something impossibly inhuman staring back.  

"Geez, okay, fine.  Don't get your freaking feathers fluffed," Dean huffs.

"So what's that mean?" Sam presses, "That we can't kill Abaddon?"

"Abaddon's a unique case, I think..." Cas muses, his stormy expression passing easily as he looks back to Sam, "She's bound to that body, so she could most likely be trapped indefinitely in it... similar to how you had previously trapped and dismembered her with that devil’s trap.  Prior to when you foolishly let her escape by leaving her to her own devices."

Dean gives him a surly look before sinking back against the pillow again.  Cas insists, "Well, you did."

“Yeah, okay.  So we cut her up into little pieces, sink those in concrete, launch them into space…? Or what?” Sam asks.

“That… could work, yes,” the angel replies, lightly rubbing Dean’s chest in lazy circles until the hunter grasps his wrist and holds his hand still.  He’s not offended, though in his current mood he finds it slightly funny.  He thinks Dean’s dark blush is especially humorous, though the way it brightens his freckles is more endearing than laughable.  

“Well, that should be easy,” Sam says drily, settling back, “Do you know if she is the only knight of hell?”

“Presently, yes,” Cas confirms, “Though as you may recall, she had several angels who had signed away their grace to her… so there is a possibility that there could be more in the future.  Fortunately, I suppose, those angels are presently on the other side of the gate to Hell.”

“Fortunately,” Dean snorts, trying to shift away from Cas in the bed.  Castiel just moves closer insistently, this time hooking his leg over Dean’s and snugging up against his hip almost intimately.  Dean holds perfectly still, mortified.

“It’s fortunate in that we will get to them first,” the archangel says matter-of-factly.  

“Yeah, but unfortunate in that they’re going to tear the freaking gate right off of its hinges.  And here we still don’t even know how we’re going to even get into - or out of - Hell in the first place,” Dean grumbles, letting Cas pull his hand free to just rest his palm against his chest.  He drops his own hand to his side; bad enough that the stupid angel is hanging all over him in front of Sam, it’s not like he’s going to hold hands with him.

“We’re working on it,” Sam says placatingly.  His mood has improved considerably with the arrival of their awkward archangel; while he wishes that Gadreel was in attendance, there’s something very satisfying about it just being the three of them again in a seedy motel room in the wee hours of the morning.  He’s exhausted, but he is happy for the company and pleased for the interruption that Castiel’s surprise visit caused.

Sometimes he hates “lights out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean sighs.

“Hey, Cas, did Dean tell you about Arakiel?”

“Yes,” Cas replies comfortably, “And I told him that it is a serious problem.”

“Did he tell you what Arakiel said about being able to tell which angels had been in us?”

The wording is unintentionally laden with innuendo, but Castiel completely misses it per usual.  Dean’s blush, which had started to die down, blazes a cheery pink across his cheeks again as he pointedly stares at the ceiling and avoids eye contact with everyone.

“Of course he can.  Anyone can.  Any angel, I mean.”

“How?  Like… does it leave a mark or something?  Like do angels write their names on their vessels or their souls or something?” Sam asks interestedly, leaning forward.

“No, no… marking a soul is different.  It’s more intentional,” Cas says, shaking his head.  His hand automatically tracks over to the burned print on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean just as automatically catches his wrist again and holds his hand in place.  The angel makes a slightly impatient sound and pulls Dean’s hand up to kiss his knuckles, and the hunter jerks his hand back and petulantly rolls onto his side, facing away from him.  It unfortunately means that he is looking directly at Sam, who seems to find the whole exchange hilarious.

Dean scowls darkly.

“When an angel inhabits a vessel, it leaves behind some of its grace.  It’s negligible, not enough to hurt either party, but it is noticeable to other angels,” Cas continues, unfazed, propping his head up on his arm and spooning up against Dean’s back.  

Sam thinks on what Gadreel had said that morning - that he hated being human and that there is no trace of his grace in him at all.  He had sorrowfully said that Arakiel had seen more of him in the Winchesters than that she had seen in him.  At the time, Sam hadn’t realized that his lover had meant the words very literally: Sam and Dean now have more of his grace than he does.

There is also the uncomfortable fact that Lucifer’s grace lingered on him like dirty fingerprints on glass.  He frowns slightly and asks uncertainly, “Is that how angels always know who I am?  Because they can smell the devil on me?”

“All angels know both of you because you’re Sam and Dean Winchester.  We’ve all known you since before you were born,” the angel replies, hooking his chin over Dean’s shoulder lazily, “Though yes, we can feel Lucifer’s grace in you.”

“How come you never mentioned it?”

“You never asked.”

Sam doesn’t really have a response for that.  He hates that sort of logic, the ‘Well, you never asked for this specific and frankly previously unimaginable information so I didn’t mention it even though it is obvious to me’ sort of logic.  He sighs slightly, expertly avoiding rolling his eyes at the angel.

“Is there any way to get it out?” he asks finally.

“You could, though it would probably be painful and would take tools that we don’t likely have,” Cas admits, “But in theory, yes, it’s possible.”

Sam thinks on that, settling slightly into his pillows and blankets again as he wonders at the glow of grace, both from his most beloved and from the devil himself, and what it means.  It’s easy to fall into pity or panic at the thought of the tincture of another soul on his, but he is too tired.  Even though he is happier now, less discouraged than he’d been when they had gone to bed, he still isn’t positive that he’s ready to sleep.

Dean, however, decides that he’s had enough when Cas wraps his arms comfortably around him.  His fading flush renews itself with vigor.  He grates out, “Okay, great slumber party, girls, but lights out.”

He leans up and reaches over to pull the short ball chain for the lamp, hoping to extinguish conversation as well.

“Com'mon, Dean," Sam groans, "Get over yourself."

"Nah, seriously," Dean insists, putting on the authoritative big brother voice and rolling his shoulder to try to throw Castiel off, "We gotta get on the road early, we shouldn't even have stopped."

_And it's embarrassing as hell to have another dude hanging all over me in bed right in freaking front of you.  How come no one else thinks this is weird?_

Sam huffs exaggeratedly and flops back onto his back, "Fine."

"Good night," Dean replies with a sing-songy false cheerfulness as he switches off the light.

It's quiet for a moment before Cas says, "It's possible that the Men of Letters have tools for extracting grace-"

"It's lights out, Cas.  No talking."

"Why?" the angel asks blankly.

"Because... it's lights out!" Dean blusters.

The angel obviously has an opinion on this, but he expresses it in a protracted sigh that makes Sam snicker.  Dean frowns slightly in the dark, then turns onto his back again.  Castiel resettles himself, cuddling close exactly the way that he knows Dean likes best.  With the lights out, he's free to caress Dean's chest and tummy, appreciatively running his squarish fingers over the smooth planes of muscle through his tshirt.  Dean doesn't stop him immediately, but he does eventually catch on to his hand and hold it lightly in his own.

He remembers a time, probably five years before, when Cas had crept in to his bed while Sam slept in the same room.  It had been the most silent, most intense make-out session of his life.  He'd never been so simultaneously embarrassed, aroused, smug, and terrified in his life as he'd been when the upstart angel had pulled back and smiled at him, his hair ridiculous, and mouthed the words _I love you Dean_.  He'd have thrown him off and cursed him out for his sentimentality right then, except that Sam was soundly asleep across the room and he was pinned under the angel's slight, strategically positioned weight.  

He and Castiel had been addicted to each other then; Dean recognized now that he'd been out of his mind, clinging to this one good thing while everything else was falling down around them.  Cas had probably been the same, expecting to die any moment in a blaze of light and burned feathers.  They'd snuck around here and there, desperate for secrecy.  He'd been so ashamed of needing him and so afraid to be found out.  As long as no one knew, as long as they didn't put a name on what they were, no one could use it to hurt them.  No one could take Castiel from him.

The angel's breath is warm against his neck, and Dean wonders for a moment if he's thinking about the same thing.  Safe in the darkness, he turns his head and nuzzles his lips against Cas's, nudging him into a soundless kiss in the dark.  He forgives him for being there, though even in his thoughts he doesn't quite thank him for coming.  His body is warm and solid against him, grounding amidst a million shifting pieces.  It never lasts, but he secretly holds on to these moments in the deepest part of his secret heart.

Almost drowsing, he remembers his promise to the angel that "this time would be different."  It seems disproportionately, desperately important at that given moment.  He half-prays his gratitude for his close presence as he falls asleep, his thoughts disjointed and adoring.  He feels Castiel shift closer in response and isn't sure if he is just imagining the light press of a wing resting against him.

\----------

Though the attack was a full three days before, active, 24 hour forensic work is still going on in Milford, New Hampshire.  On the first day, 27 bodies were cleaned up off of the sidewalks after meticulous cataloging and photography.  After that, the local team began working to clear out the coffee shop, consignment clothing store, diner, and a computer repair office of their assortment of victims.  The death toll is being estimated at around 120, though they haven't matched all of the limbs to bodies yet or made identification matches on more than half of the victims.

Todd, a forensic tech shipped in from neighboring Manchester is nearing the end of his extended shift.  Guts and gore usually don't bother him, but the seemingly endless procession of corpses and entrails has oversensitized him; he's never seen so much blood.  He's thankful that the icy February winter has kept the smell down, but he is starting to feel like the fledgling odors of decay are pushing their way through his mask and climbing down his throat.

A line from an old They Might Be Giants song runs through his his head on loop as he packs up his kit: _Count the arms, the legs, and heads, and then divide by five._

He straightens, arching the stiffness out of his back, and turns, then jumps when he is face to face with the local colleague who has arrived to relieve him.  

"Oh, hey," the other man says, hooking his fingers under his plastic ID lanyard and flashing his card at him, "Easy, man."

Todd relaxes slightly, "Sorry, I guess it's starting to get to me."

"No worries, I'm ready to dig right in," the other man says with a nod and a slightly out of place smile.  

The words ring strangely in Todd's ears, but forensics guys are known to be a little off from time to time.  He peels off his bloodied blue nitrile gloves and tosses them in one of the biohazard bins before walking his colleague through the carefully cleared aisle between diner tables.

"All sections have been photographed, sections A1 through B3 are completed and can be taken in to the morgue," he says, gesturing.  The gore covers such a wide range that the diner has been marked into a grid of 3' x 3' squares.  The eight sections that he has completed included six full corpses and up to eight partial victims. He continues wearily, "Spatter analysis is working on A1-4, but nothing seems to fit."

The other man nods, looking thoughtfully at the colorful gorescape, and comments brightly, "Looks like Shark Week to me."

Todd stares at him tiredly, then blinks slowly to indicate comprehension but lack of approval.  His deadpan expression and timing are almost comedic on their own, but the other man thankfully doesn’t laugh.  The weary tech would have likely punched him if he had.  He leans in to look at the newcomer’s nametag and says, “Well, all right, _Tim_.  I'm heading out.  If they don’t send me home, I’m sure I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Yes, right,” Tim says, smiling again in that way that seems slightly too enthusiastic for a crime scene.  He reaches over to shake hands with him, nodding, before turning to survey the room again.

“Right.  Bye,”

Todd turns on his heel and walks out over the carefully positioned plastic walkway, his eyes burning from weariness.  Normally, his job doesn’t really faze him.  It really doesn't.  He’s completely capable of doing even the grisliest autopsy without much more than a faint wave of queasiness on the first look.  Heck, he could eat his lunch while going over photographs.  And usually, he is able to snuff out the images when he leaves, like flipping a switch. But this particular one is all up in his senses, filling his nose and the space behind his eyes with dismembered bodies and jellied insides, distended intestines and lacerated skin.  He can’t think of anything that could do this, and he had heard some whispers of terrorism or biological warfare.

In any case, he’s glad to be heading back to the hotel.  As he approaches his car, he realizes to his annoyance that he left his keys inside the outer pocket of his kit, which he’d left at the crime scene, neatly beside the B4 section marker.  Sighing, he does an about-face, leaving a round little mark where his booted toe swivels on the snowy sidewalk, and walks back to the diner.

It's very quiet, which he always appreciates.  Some techs like to put on Spotify if they're going to be working for awhile, which Todd always finds a bit grating and irreverent.  That, and the last thing he needs is to somehow link the image of someone's corpse to _Call Me Maybe_.  Though maybe it would make that one better.  This particular crime scene is one that he wants _no_ associations with; in fact, he may never come to Milford again.  He probably won't. 

He's thankful for the silence, but at first glance he doesn’t see the other tech.  That’s just fine with him; he’s not in the mood for conversation, especially not with the local staff.  Small-town police departments are just not the same as the ones in decent-sized cities; it takes a different type of person to want to do forensics in a town small enough that you’re likely to recognize your victims.  

He leans down to pick up his bag, then feels his blood run cold when he spots Tim crouching down beside a corpse with his back to him.  He isn’t wearing gloves or any protective plastic suiting as he kneels in the muck, and Todd is aware of a disturbing _gnashing_ sound.   It's interspersed with crunching and squishing noises.  Liquid, wet noises.  His fingers tighten on the black leather case and he straightens carefully, trying not to make a sound; this is not a situation that he wants to be involved in without any other law enforcement.  If he can just back out quietly, he can retrieve a few of the cops who are keeping a perimeter…

“Going somewhere?” Tim asks, glancing over his shoulder at him.  There is blood on his chin and the look in his eyes is predatory and inhuman.

“Just, ah, forgot my kit,” Todd says, holding the bag up as though it would explain everything.  His instinct is to run, but he doesn’t know if running will help, or if he’s too tired to get away from the other man if he follows.  Part of his mind flashes to what do do if you encounter a bear, whether you're supposed to run, posture, or play dead.  He doesn't remember.  It doesn't really matter, as Tim is definitely not a bear, but he would have been reassured to have _some_ frame of reference.

“Ah, that’s too bad,” Tim stands and turns toward him, “But you know, I have to admit that I am much more interested in your company than theirs.  It’s so much… fresher. _Livier_.”

Having given all of the explanation that he intends to give, it's time for the big reveal.  His bloody smile turns smarmy for just a moment before his face slides away and is reshaped into an eyeless, gaping mouth ringed with many, many very sharp teeth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some gore in the third section of this chapter, just to warn you.

The archangel stays all night, his soft, slim belly pressed up against the curve of Dean’s back.  He marvels at how different his lover is while he sleeps, how the tension softens his muscles and lets their bodies fit together with a heavy, organic slump that Dean actively fights when he’s awake.  Even when they’re alone and he wants closeness, there’s something in him that won’t let his body yield completely.

He inhales the scent of his skin, focusing on perceiving him through his vessel’s senses rather than his own.  As an angel, he can pick out every note of him, from the composition of the air he is exhaling to the origins of every grain of dirt under his nails.  Narrowing his view to what his human body could experience, he is better able to experience him as a whole.  He can appreciate the way that his slightly astringent shampoo smells in combination with his aftershave and his warm, musky skin; he can enjoy the press of his muscles through his worn t-shirt and the way that his soft, short hair feels against his lips when he kisses the base of his skull.  He feels his warmth and the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathes in and out, gently respiring in his arms.

In the early morning, he feels his hunter stir tiredly.  He can tell that he doesn’t want to be awake yet, wants to stay in bed for a few moments longer.  There is a minute tension through his muscles that disrupts the perfect, soft alignment of their bodies and Castiel knows that Dean is warring with his feelings about the angel still being there.

Dean lifts his head and drowsily looks over in the semi-darkness of the curtained room to find that Sam is curled up on his side, facing away from them, the rise and fall of his chest deep and regular.  His brother is clearly still asleep, which affords Dean a few minutes of lying comfortably with his lover before he has to bluster and kick his feathered ass out in a show of manly bravado.

He rolls carefully onto his back, expertly avoiding the _poing!_ and yowl of cheap mattress springs.  Turning his head, he presses a light kiss to the angel’s full mouth.  He can feel that Castiel wants to talk, probably to greet him or ask him how he slept, so he kisses him again to still the movement of his lips.  He knows that the angel doesn't mind kissing him first thing in the morning, but Dean is too self-conscious about things like morning breath to engage in anything more than a chaste, closed-mouth kiss.  The angel draws him closer, easily turning him onto his side so that they are face to face.

Dean sighs quietly, but doesn't pull away when Castiel presses his brow to his.  They breath the same air, but it somehow seems charged with lightning and the clarity of great heights when the archangel exhales.

Dean won’t admit it, but he lives for these sorts of quiet, ordinary moments.  He goes on about 'the life' and the virtues and rewards of hunting, but a lifetime on the road and time in both Hell and Purgatory have worn on him; he secretly needs these private, quiet spots of normalcy.  In this case, pressing up close to his archangel, knowing his unseen wings are wrapped around him, while his brother sleeps safely in the other bed.  It's no one else's definition of normal, but it's the closest that Dean could want for himself.

He wraps one arm around Castiel's waist and holds him loosely.  He is comfortable and warm, still drowsy; he could easily pretend to fall asleep again and just stay close for a bit longer.  He doesn't know why he needs to grouse and complain and push the angel away when there are other people around; it isn't like Sam doesn't know, and it isn't like Sam doesn't fully support the closest creature to an in-law that he was likely ever to have.  It would have meant a lot to Cas if he could have acknowledged him in public, or God forbid, occasionally tell him how he felt about him.

He knows Castiel is jealous of the easy way that Sam and Gadreel show affection, regardless of who is around; Sam had even given the blond a peck on the cheek and a "love you" the previous afternoon before they'd headed out.  By comparison, Dean had just kicked Cas out of bed and said he'd call him when they settled.  That was kinda a dick move (especially since he hadn't called) and he feels an uncomfortable little curl of guilt threading its way through his chest as he thinks about how his lover came to him anyway.

He can't make up for that, but he knows he can give the angel something that he wants.  Tilting his head up, he angles his head so that his lips are against the shell of Castiel's ear.

"Love you, Cas," he breathes, just barely audibly.

He nearly groans as his lover crushes him closer in obvious pleasure at the words.  He knows how badly Castiel wants to hear them all the time, but just thinking them and acknowledging his own feelings to himself makes his heart beat uncomfortably hard.  He feels slightly jittery at the admission, even though he knows that he spoke quietly enough that Sam wouldn’t have heard even if he had been awake.  

Castiel turns his head to kiss Dean’s cheek, not replying aloud.  Instead, he keeps the flighty hunter in his inescapably close hold and rewards him with another kiss, on the mouth this time, in tandem with a sensation that feels remarkably like the soft brush of feathers along his bare arms.  He knows that Cas habitually wraps his wings around him when they sleep side by side, but he very rarely feels it; this is accompanied by a familiar thrill of warmth, a comfortable reminder that his lover is something more than human.

He sighs quietly, letting out the tension, and kisses him back affectionately as he curls his fingers around his tie.  When the alarm on the beside table buzzes jarringly, in that slightly frantic way unique to digital alarm clocks from the 1980’s, Dean jumps as though he’s been electrocuted and reflexively pushes the angel away.  

Sam groans, rolling onto his back and flailing one arm with surprising precision to knock the snooze button with his outstretched fingers.  

Dean holds very still, Castiel’s arms still around his waist even though he has braced both hands against the angel’s chest and pushed himself as far back as possible. He meets the his eyes in the half-darkness and grumbles aloud, “You’re still here?”

There is a flash of white as Castiel vehemently rolls his eyes at him.  With a slight upward turn to his mouth, a smirk that he learned during his months as a human, he replies, “Self-evidently.”

“Morning Cas,” Sam murmurs groggily, hauling himself up to turn the lamp on.  With that accomplished, he turns off the alarm entirely and leans back against the headboard, rubbing the gunk out of his eyes with his fingers.

“Good morning, Sam.  I hope you slept well?”

The younger hunter looks over at him blearily.  He isn’t good at waking up, but he recovers quickly most mornings.  He is curious as to how cozy Cas has managed to get with his closet-case brother; he notes that the trenchcoated angel is still fully clothed, though at some point over the night he had slipped beneath the blankets to insinuate himself even more into Dean’s personal space.

Dean, for his part, looks no less mortified by the situation than he had the previous night.  Sam smiles to himself, thinking that his know-it-all brother’s embarrassment has already made his morning.  

“Yeah, I slept pretty okay considering that the bed is crap.”

Castiel nods thoughtfully, releasing Dean when his lover pulls away to slide out of bed.  He watches as he pads off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, appreciating the solid sway of his gait.  He smiles slightly, subtly like all of his expressions, and Sam smiles as well at the suddenly realization that the angel is completely lovestruck.

"I still don't understand why you and Dean choose the very cheapest lodging that you can find.  Your income is not really an issue."

"Mm, it's also partly just the other guests and the expectations of the owners - no one really pays attention to us here, the security is low, and paying cash is the norm," Sam replies, putting his long legs over the edge of the bed and easing his weight to his feet.  He feels the bones in his toes and feet pop and makes a face, then lifts one foot and swivels it at the ankle before setting it down again.

"You coming with us on this Abaddon hunt?"

"Mm, I think Dean wants me on my way... but I expect that you will call me if there is anything of importance."

Sam pulls a face at that - his brother is really ridiculous about Castiel sometimes.  He doesn't know why the angel - archangel, for God's sake! - puts up with it, or why he has such a look of abject adoration on his face at this moment.  There are aspects of the Dean-Cas dynamic that he doesn't think he will ever understand and would definitely never have worked if either of them was even approaching what anyone would consider normal.

"Okay.  Well, yeah, of course we'll call you if there's anything there, y'know?"

Cas nods, his expression brightening again when Dean returns.  The hunter nods to his brother, who heads in to get his day started and shuts the door behind himself with a little click.  

The angel takes rapidly calculated advantage of the moment to lean in and kiss his lover.  Dean immediately catches him by the shoulders and holds him at an arm’s length, “Hey, easy, Cas, don’t get-”

“I love you too,” Cas tells him with his usual blunt, earnest delivery.  

Dean’s heart beats hard and quick color floods his cheeks.  He feels even more determined to push him off, already deeply regretting what he’d said before; he isn’t ready, will probably _never_ be ready, for all of this flowery verbal crap.  It was a misstep, he’d been half-asleep and feeling guilty, and now Cas is… well, Cas is _smiling_.  Like actually smiling, showing a little flash of his straight white teeth and everything. Well, fuck.  The idiot is happy.  Dean feels a pleasant little buzz realizing that he has made this obscenely powerful celestial creature happy.

He smiles back a little crookedly, surprisingly proud of himself, and leans in to kiss him lightly, “Yeah, yeah.  Get out of here, man.  I’ll call you when we get where we’re goin’, okay?”

Castiel smiles in response, nodding once before vanishing right out from under Dean's hands with a rustle of stiff feathers.  Dean realizes suddenly that those three words (hell, he’d gotten this response from _two_ of the three) are probably the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card.  He isn't quite a dick enough to abuse it, but he tucks the knowledge away for later consideration.

Sam rejoins him a moment later with a clean face and combed hair.  A splash of cold water first thing in the morning tends to get him moving, and already he looks alert enough to drive for a few hours.  He glances around and frowns, "You kicked him out already?"

"I didn't 'kick him out,'" Dean replies defensively, even though he realizes he kind of did, "I just told him we'd call him when we got there."

"Y'know, it wouldn't kill you for him to ride along with us," Sam comments as he pulls on a clean shirt.

He half considers telling Sam that he'd wanted to hang out with just him, like old times, just to make him feel like an asshole for suggesting otherwise.  He really doesn't need Sam nagging him about proper treatment of an archangel who is more than capable of taking care of himself; Cas is one of the most stubborn, opinionated creatures he'd ever met.  Just because he saves his bad behavior for Dean doesn't mean that it's just his imagination.  Instead, he just snorts and resumes packing up; they hadn't really spread out since they'd pretty much just settled in for sleep the previous night, but there are hex bags to collect and a few stray "security blanket" weapons to pack up. 

"Seriously, man, you don't have to keep chasing him off because I'm here.  I know you're like seriously in denial, but I already know and I like... really don't care."

"Yeah," Dean grumbles, toying with his gun and absently double-checking the safety before tucking it into the waistband of his jeans, "I know.  You're like a freaking pride parade all by yourself, I got it."

Sam rolls his eyes, marveling at how small minded his brother can still be.  Even nine years after their father died, Dean still hasn't lost some of the attitudes that had been ingrained in him;, John Winchester tended to have pretty strong opinions about what men did and did not do and no qualms with tossing around an occasional slur.  He was less bigoted against minorities and women, but Sam had recognized years ago that he shouldn't just parrot back things that his father had said.

And while he knows that Dean had never managed to get away during their father's lifetime, he still feels an uncomfortable twinge in his stomach when he sees the depth of his brother's self-loathing voiced through their father's slurs to describe people like himself.  

"I'm just saying, it's fine. Y'know?  Like, it's okay for you to treat Cas like he's your... I dunno, whatever he is."

"Hey, I treat him like exactly what he is," Dean protests gruffly.

"You treat him like you don't want him around.  That's really kinda crappy," Sam points out.  He sits down on the edge of his bed to shove his foot into one of his low, sturdy boots, knowing already that this isn't a cause he should be championing; he knows Dean well enough to know that there's little point in embarking on these sorts of discussions.

"He's a grownup, Sam, like really freaking grownup like a _million billion years_ grownup. Pretty sure he doesn't need you watchdogging for him."

"Yeah, but I'm sure you'd tell me if you thought I was being a dick to Gadreel-"

"No, actually, 'cause you're my brother and I'm always on your side over his," Dean tells him, raising his eyebrows as though this should be obvious.

Sam stares at him for a moment.  _Wow, well **that's** unhealthy._   He shakes his head, "I'm on your side, Dean, I just think you could be a bit nicer to him, y’know?  The guy’s crazy over you.”

Dean rolls his eyes, “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, I’m good.  M’I driving the first leg?”

“Sure, if you want.”

The taller man follows his brother out, casting a final glance about the room to make sure that they aren’t leaving anything behind.  They are practically professional motel guests; it is extremely rare to forget anything, particularly anything of any importance.  Satisfied that the room doesn’t contain any noteworthy traces of them, he pulls the door behind them and walks out to the Impala.

The first half hour of the drive is quiet.  Dean is sulking a bit, but his heart’s not really in it; as a result, the storm clouds blow off reasonably quickly, and the elder Winchester is soon tapping his fingers on the top of his thigh along with Zepplin.  Sam recognizes that something put his brother in a better mood that morning and he is reasonably sure that it was the angel who’d been curled up with him.  He has a sudden wide-eyed instant of worry that they were both so chipper because they’d been fooling around in the next bed, but it doesn’t last long; Dean wouldn’t dare.  He wouldn’t even kiss Cas if he thought there was a chance he’d get caught.

His phone buzzes in his coat pocket.  He pulls it out with a practiced, smooth gesture and taps his password into the lock screen, flicking his gaze between the road and his phone with the utmost nonchalance.

“Eyes on the goddamn road.”

“It’s good,” Sam replies with a little smile, “I got it.”

“Don’t fucking text while you’re driving my baby!” Dean grumbles, though there isn’t a huge degree of vehemence behind it.  He knows Sam well enough to know that the college kid can multitask like a pro and is almost boringly focused when it comes to things like road safety.

“You text him back then,” he says with a little grin, dropping his phone into Dean’s lap.

Dean jumps, bringing his comfortably spread legs together to catch the phone between his knees.  Out of curiosity, he glances at the screen, then groans dramatically, “I am not replying to your freaking _boyfriend_ for you.”

Sam’s delight at his brother’s discomfort is obvious.  He laughs and it's the boyish chuckle, almost a giggle, that Dean secretly loves to hear - when Sam laughs like that, it means that he's okay.  With everything else going on, Dean needs Sam to be okay.  

“Well, give it back, then, I feel like… maybe a sonnet coming on then.  I can totally type one-handed.”  Keeping his eyes on the road, he holds his hand out to his brother and wiggles his fingertips, “Com’mon, dude.”

Dean snorts, sitting back with his little half-smile, “What do you want me to write?”

“Just tell him I miss him too and that we’re just getting on the road.”

His brother nods and methodically taps out the message.  It takes him longer than Sam feels that it should (it is a relatively short message, after all), and after a minute, he demands suspiciously, “Read it back to me.”

Dean glances over at him, then reads aloud, “‘Hey, this is Dean.  Sam is driving.  He said for me to tell you that he misses you and we just left the motel.'”

“You couldn’t have just… I dunno… pretended to be me and just said it.”

“No, that’d be weird,” he replies, wrinkling his nose, “But c’mon, be impressed -  I even capitalized and punctuated and crap for you.”

Sam laughs to himself, “Awesome, thanks.  Knew you had it in you.”

Dean sits back comfortably in the passenger seat, knocking one end of Sam’s phone against the top of his leg rhythmically.  He doesn’t look at the screen again, instead watching the road ahead.  Though his eyes are following the center divider, his mind is elsewhere.

The phone buzzes and Dean reads the return message aloud, “He says ‘Thanks Dean, please tell him that I love him and that I will text him later.’  Ewww, I read that out loud!”

Sam grinns evilly, “Tell him I love him too.”

“Really, Sam, _really_?  Come on, don’t make me write that crap.”

“Like I said, I can always text myself.”

Dean groans, but dutifully starts typing back.  He pauses mid-sentence and asks, “When did that happen anyway?  The love thing?  I mean, dude wore you around for months, not exactly like… y’know, Casablanca happening there.”

Sam laughs to himself, glancing over at his brother.  He wonders why Dean wants to know, but he’s eager to talk about it if his brother is willing, “I dunno, I mean, it just kinda happened. Like… angels talk in their heads all the time.  And I just kinda talked back to him.  We talked all the time, y’know?  About everything.  We just _liked_ each other… and then there was the whole soul-grace thing… and just, I dunno.  It’s hard to explain.”

Dean is curious about the soul-on-grace contact, what it means and what it feels like when it happens.  He knows that he’s experienced it with Castiel - the stupid angel had practically burned a hole right through him when he pulled him out of Hell after all - but he can’t remember.  Cas has mentioned before that he does; Dean still remembers exactly how awkward and strangely moved he felt when the angel told him once that holding his soul is one of his favorite memories.  It was when Castiel had fallen in love with him.

Cas claims that Dean had fallen in love with him then too, or his soul had at least.  That had been weird, being told what his soul thought.  Particularly when the very idea of loving Castiel still scared the shit out of him, even now.  They had been together on and off for 5 years, and he’d managed to say the words exactly twice including this morning… and Cas had been on his deathbed the first time.  

Dean licks his lips and asks, trying to sound casual, “What was that like?  The soul… touchy thing.”

Sam doesn’t really have a way to describe an angel or its grace.  His mind had been human at the time and he had only had a limited ability to understand what he was seeing; now only pieces of the image and the sensation linger.  He saw Gadreel then, in all of his ancient glory; he remembers feeling awe, and thinking that he was impossibly beautiful but completely alien.  Absolutely nothing like a human, except in some aspects of his shape.  He was remarkable and brilliant and absolutely horrifying.  With everything that he was, and every vulnerability that he showed Sam, it was impossible not to love him.  He can’t remember it now, not really, and when he tries, it actually hurts.  Makes his eyes water.  All he can recall is his own feeling of adoration and almost-ownership, and the safety and strange  _forever_ of Gadreel.

He has vague memories of green and gold wings.  

“It was like… I guess… usually when an angel possesses someone, they just share one way.  It’s like the the angel as full run of the vessel’s memories and emotions, but the vessel doesn't get anything back.  Gadreel and I kind of went both ways.  Like he was kinda sharing his grace back with me,” Sam tries to explain pathetically, reddening slightly, “It sounds stupid, yeah.  I know.  But it was really… I dunno.  It was great.  It was like a million times better than the best sex ever.”

Dean laughs a little awkwardly, “Maybe than the best sex _you’ve_ ever had….”

His brother rolls his eyes, smirking.  Typical Dean to pull it away from the emotional stuff, but he didn’t really mind.  It is harder to explain the fact that he’d fallen in love with someone who hadn’t even had a body at the time, and that he’d felt empty without him even though he'd never really agreed to his being there.  It is hard to explain how once Gadreel was gone, he’d cared more about the fact he might never see the angel again than the fact that the world might end.  It is hard to explain how he still loves Gadreel, even with a male body and no heavenly majesty, and how he wishes that he could look in the rear view mirror and see Gadreel’s mussed blond hair.

"Whatever," he says aloud, smirking.  "Did you tell him I love him or no?"

“Yeah,” Dean grumbles good-naturedly, passing the phone back to him, “Now I think I need your friggin’ gel sanitizer for my fingers to get off the gay.”

“It’s catching,” Sam laughs, deciding it’s not worth scolding him.  Dean already knows that it’s inappropriate to say things like that, and when they’re in the car with just the two of them, it just isn’t worth ruining the good mood to even pursue social activism and teaching moments. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

 

\------------------------------------------

 

Though she’d slept and eaten occasionally during her time with Arakiel, the possession and the hard travel had taken a toll on Allison’s body.  Even as young and resilient as she is, her immunity suffered from uncomfortable nights and unhealthy eating.  When they arrived at the bunker, she crashed for several hours and woke with some kind of intense stomach bug that was exactly how she didn't want to introduce herself as a house guest.

Fortunately, the inhabitants of the bunker were exactly the right combination of attentive and hands-off.  She had someone to check in on her and make sure she had enough to eat and drink, but she also had the privacy to be disgustingly ill when it couldn’t be avoided.  It was pretty much anything that a girl with a volatile digestive tract could want.

By the following day, she feels much better, though she is still shaky and still unwilling to put anything into her body other than saltines and water.  In the back of her mind, she knows that Arakiel could probably cure her and fix her up if she called, but something in her doesn’t want the angel to see her like this at all.  She knows that it’s stupid and prideful, but she still doesn’t call to him.

The ginger girl, Charlie, is about the same size as she is and has offered her a change of clothes.  They’re not really her style, but they’re clean.  The strangest thing is wearing someone else’s underwear.  Charlie assured her that they were fresh out of the package and completely untouched, but there's still a vulnerable feeling of uninvited camaraderie.  Her own clothes, with the exception of her blood-stained bra, go directly into the garbage.

The shower feels good.  Even if it didn't have a soothing emotional effect, it would have felt good just to wash the last few weeks off of her - she had remained in perfect condition during her time as an occupied vessel, but there had been almost a week where she’d just spent her days holed up in a pickup with an angel who had no consideration for things like personal cleanliness and sleeping horizontally.  She’d picked up deodorant and dry shampoo at one of their gas stops, but that only went so far toward feeling like a decent human being.  Standing in the shower with the hot, almost too hot, water running down her in clear, clean rivulets, she finally feels like she can take a deep breath and look back on everything that had happened.

The shower also finally got off the last, dusty remnants of the blood that had dried and flaked off of her skin after Abaddon had nearly sliced her in half.  The scar is a thick, shiny pink line that cuts cleanly across her breast.  She traces her fingertip over it curiously, trying to decide if she thinks its ugly or cool.  It's a bit of both.  There is enough distance between her and her near death experience that she doesn't remember the intensity of the pain, only that it had been intense.  She remembers how scared she was, and how beautiful Arakiel had been in that handsome brown vessel.  How she had seen him shining through the man's eyes, and how she realized how she must have shone when he had been inside of her. 

She cups her hands and lets them fill with water, then spreads her fingers and lets the water cascade to the floor in loud, heavy blots.  She misses Arakiel.  She feels the absence of his presence the way she felt the lack of warmth after turning off the space heater in her dorm, like part of her is still warm, still feeling him, and everything else seems colder by comparison.  It isn’t love; she isn’t even sure it’s fondness.  It’s something in her wanting something eternal and powerful; while she knows that Arakiel’s morality is different from her own, she’s naive enough to think that she can change his mind.

Sighing, she finally turns off the water and steps out, wrapping herself in a towel.  She looks over at the steamy mirror and can only make out the soft curve of her cheeks, some shadows, and her water-darkened blonde hair.  There is a strange moment where she almost worries that she wouldn’t recognize herself if she saw a clear reflection, as though she would be substantially changed or scarred by her experiences.  Maybe she would be more beautiful for it.

She resists the urge the smear the moisture away to look at herself and instead focuses on towel-drying her slim, curvy body before she slips into the clean, soft clothes.  They aren’t her at all, and she feels slightly naked with her only bra tumbling around in the dryer.  It feels like it's been a long time since she's felt like herself.  Her hand shakes as she zips her borrowed hoodie up all the way and steels herself before walking out into the hallway.  She still feels a bit woozy and unsteady on her feet, but she stubbornly sets one foot in front of the other.

The blond, the one who had a strange name and had been kissing Sam in the back seat, walks up behind her in the hallway.  His long legs easily carry him past her, though he slows briefly to nod at her in friendly acknowledgement.  He’s big and has broad shoulders and a proud, erect carriage that reminds her slightly of Arakiel. 

Allison tilts her head to the side, then follows after him.

“Hey, hey.  Sorry, I didn’t catch your name the other day,” she calls, reaching out her hand as if to catch onto his sleeve, though she has no intention of touching him.

He stops and turns to her, pausing politely for her to catch up.  She can’t help but notice that he is very good looking, very chiseled, and fills out his sweater and jeans in a way that most models would envy.  He smiles slightly and nods to her, “I’m sorry.  I’m Gadreel.  You were Allison?”

“Still am,” she laughs a little, her tone turning a little flirty without even meaning to.  Sure, he looked like he had a good ten or fifteen years on her, but she didn’t have anything against a bit of May-December romance.  Well, not that it mattered; judging my the fact that he seemed to be hooked up with one of the Winchesters, he probably wasn’t super available anyway. He smiles, lowering his eyes for a second in a way that came off as charmingly shy.  _Gadreel, hm?_   She tucks a piece of her damp hair behind her ear and asks innocently, “Um, this might sound like a stupid question, but I’ve had a weird coupla days. Are you human?”

He blinks at her slowly, then nods with the same smile as before.  Modest, but earnest.  Almost painfully sincere, as though things like sarcasm or deceit didn’t come naturally to him.

“I am, yes.  It is a new condition, but one that I am striving to embrace.”

She pauses, then asks, “What were you before?”

“An angel, much like the one who had kidnapped you, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.  _Oh_ ,” Allison murmurs.  She looks him over thoughtfully, noting now even more similarities between him and her own angel; he has a comparable formality in his style of speech, though he seems more direct.  He has a similar way of moving, though there isn’t the same sort of easy strength in his movements.  It's easy enough to take his statement as truth; there is something about him that is obviously ancient, obviously intelligent, and has obviously not been human for very long.

“Don’t worry, though.  We are very different, and we will keep you safe from Arakiel.”

“Did you know Arakiel?”

The former angel pauses, then nods.  He looks at her thoughtfully, wishing that he could read her more easily to ascertain how fragile she is after her kidnapping.  He has a lot of questions that he would like to ask her about the other angel, but he does not wish to cause her discomfort or unhappiness by asking.  He inclines his chin slightly, tilting his head to the side consideringly.  “He and I knew each other a long time ago.  He was a brilliant angel, very nearly perfect, but he unfortunately devoted himself entirely to Lucifer and paid a dear price for his adoration.”

Her eyes widen at the mention of Lucifer.  It was sort of one of those religious buzzwords that tended to make even non-believers a little bit uncomfortable.  Remembering avoidant conversations with Arakiel, she doesn’t have reason to doubt what Gadreel is saying; the blond has no motivation, and possibly no capacity, to lie.

 _Would it be enough to say that I made a choice a very long time ago, a choice for love, and it has been my downfall?_ the words stick in her mind awkwardly.

“Lucifer?” she repeats, letting her voice show her concern.

Gadreel was never one to let people rely on misconceptions or half-truths about his family.  He smiles comfortingly, reaching over to rest a large, strong hand on her shoulder, “Lucifer was an angel, if you’ll remember.  One of the finest, one of God’s favorites.  He was the morning star.  Many angels fell for him; Arakiel was just one.”

“Still.  That’s… that’s the devil.  Does that mean he’s evil?”

Sometimes Gadreel is a bit sad for the fact that humans have a hard time conceptualizing the actual nature of good and evil.  He feels his own consciousness and mental reasoning limited now as well, but he has memories of greater understanding that help him to know that the bigger picture and infinite gradations of morality do actually exist.  He shakes his head, walking her down to the library, “Not necessarily.  He was imprisoned for a very long time, like me, and it’s possible that is a very changed being.”

She nods slowly, “You were imprisoned?”

“Yes.  For a mistake, also involving Lucifer.  For a long time, many angels, and many humans indirectly, felt that I was an abomination and the definition of an evil creature.  I never was, and for that reason I would say that I don’t know if Arakiel is.  There are certainly more aspects of the situation that you or I will ever be able to comprehend.”

Allison watches as he picks a book of the top of a stack and takes a seat at one of the cherry wood tables.  There is a simple elegance in his gestures and expressions that she enjoys watching, though she doesn’t know why; it evokes a different appreciation than she had had for men or angels in the past.  She thinks of how he had touched her shoulder, and how she still almost feels the warmth though the contact was brief.  Knowing that she saw him at least in part as an Arakiel stand-in didn't change the intuitive attraction that she felt to him. 

She slides into the seat across from him without pulling out the chair - it makes her feel attractively slim to be able to do so - and leans her forearms on the table.  She studies his face, squinting slightly as though she’d be able to see more of the angel in him if she just looked harder.

“So… why aren’t you an angel anymore?”

Gadreel isn’t normally the type to turn away questions or conversation, but at the moment it seems like a lot to relate to a stranger.  Even if she’s lonely, he doesn’t actually want to talk about it.  He doesn’t return the connection that she feels, and, more than that, he’s tired of explaining his story to everyone he meets.  _Is that what meeting people is to humans?  Telling every sad thing that has happened?_ However, he isn’t sure if he is allowed to refuse to answer, or if that would be unconscionably rude.

“It’s a very convoluted story… would you be offended if I declined to tell it?” he asked politely.

Allison stares for a moment, then laughs a little awkwardly, “No, it’s okay.  You don’t have to talk about it!”

He smiles quickly, relieved.  He’s all angles, but somehow softer when he smiles.  She find that she likes looking at his smooth, surprisingly soft mouth.

“Thank you,” he looks down at the book he’s selected, then back up to her, “If you’re interested in angelic lore, there are books that you can read.  I have annotated the hardcover by the phonograph, so it is much more accurate than it was before.”

“So… do you guys just… I dunno.  Study weird stuff?”

He nods, opening his book, “I suppose that is as good a description as any for the nature of our work.”

Looking at him, she realizes that the quiet blond would rather be reading one of his books than talking to her.  She falls silent, surprised that she is actually a bit hurt by his lack of interest in her.  She doesn’t know why - perhaps it is a nagging worry that there is something about her that makes her unappealing to angels - but she wants his attention.  She isn’t quite ready yet to give up on making conversation.

“So you do it too?  Why didn’t you go with Sam and Dean?”

It is another sensitive subject for Gadreel as he remembers his own failings on their last hunt, followed by Sam’s half-hearted offer to end their relationship to let him explore his humanity.  He licks his lips, then offers another polite smile.

“We don’t all go every time,” he explains, “Some of us provide support from home, performing research or tending to other projects.  Sometimes there are more things to do than can be done in one place.”

She watches him, noting his discomfort with the topic; he clearly doesn’t like being left behind.  Probably why he was so eager to immerse himself in his reading.  Well, she too knew something about being left behind.  More than once.  She gets to her feet and walks over to pick up the lore book that he had recommended for her a moment ago.  “Do you mind if I just stay here with you?  I don't really want to be alone.”

He nods, gesturing to the seat that she had vacated as he opens his own book to a page that he’d marked the previous night, "You're very welcome.  If you decide that do do have an appetite, please let me know and I will see that you are taken care of."

She feels a pleasant little warmth at that.

 

\-------------------------------------

 

Milford is reasonably quaint, the kind of little town where the Winchesters are most comfortable.  It’s more than two crossroads and a Walmart, but still small enough to feel cozy and offer them the casual anonymity of strangers passing through.  They prefer the culture of the Midwest, but people out of their depth are the same pretty much everywhere.  As far as crisis management goes, though, law enforcement is doing pretty well.  To the Winchester's deep appreciation, all of the reports and photos are already on the local servers; even better, their security isn't good enough to present a real obstacle to two hunters trained by a high-end tinhatter.

The photos and reports are gruesome, worse than anything the Winchesters have seen in person, but they throw themselves into research.  They've seen more bodies at once - whole rooms of civilians with their throats cut or their eyes burned out - but they aren't prepared for the open-torso, Romero-style gore.  They likewise aren't prepared for varied ages of the victims, ranging from infants to old women.

"I don't honestly know if I can do this," Sam admits, looking away from the photos that Dean is poring over.  He has always been the more sensitive of the two, the one who still winces away from a grisly corpse on an autopsy table. He has only dared brief glances at the photos, instead focusing on the written reports and leaving the images to his brother.

Dean glances up at him.  His mouth has a pressed flatness and his color is slightly off, but he's manfully quelling the bone-deep, instinctive horror that is threatening to turn his stomach.  He claps him on the shoulder, "Sure you can.  Just pretend you're on a movie set and that none of it is real."

"You think we really need to go on site?  I'm sure she's long gone, Dean, if this was her."

"Didn't drive all this way to hack a server we coulda done from Lebanon .  We need to confirm it, see if there are any clues for why she did this... Like if it's part of a spell or a ritual or something. Y'know, crap these guys don't know to check for.  I mean, hell, just checking for sulfur."

“Yeah,” Sam answers uncertainly, though he’s not convinced.

He’s even less convinced when they pull up to the makeshift camp set up around ground zero.  There are no bodies on the outside, but opaque, dark red-gray puddles of blood are frozen slick to the icy sidewalk.  All of the work is happening indoors now, in the handful of venues where something had killed an awful lot of people in a number of creative, no-nonsense methods.

“Agents Johnson and Young,” Dean says smoothly, introducing himself to one of the police officers on site as the two insinuated themselves into the crime scene.  He and Sam both flash their badges appropriately, huddling miserably in their heavy coats and scarves; no matter how much they’ve traveled and how far they’ve gone, they’re still southern boys and are never prepared for the bitter northern winters.

“Your brothers in arms just left,” the tired-looking man responds, his hands sunk deep into his pockets as he looks them over, “Not surprised they sent a few groups of agents; this is just… big.  Department of Homeland Security was here yesterday, no one’s figured out anything yet.  All of the surveillance equipment’s dead, any recording devices burned right out.  Never seen anything like it.  Never.  Has to be some kind of government testing gone wrong, or terrorism, or god, this point I’d consider aliens…”

He’s rambling, but not in the way that the Winchesters are used to.  They’re accustomed to storytellers and slightly addled former hippies.  This is someone who’s just talking try to make sense of things, as though he’ll be muttering along and suddenly come upon a plausible explanation on his own.

Dean claps him on the shoulder, “Can we go in?”

“Yeah, go right ahead.  Gonna warn you though, you’re gonna puke.  Nobody who’s not forensics hasn’t come right back out and yakked in that trash can,” he tells the two agents, gesturing vaguely to a large trash barrel.

Sam licks his lips, going pale at the thought.

“Hey, Young, you want to, ah, check it out and I’ll check the perimeter?”

Dean recognizes that his baby brother might be out of his depth.  Instead of giving him a hard time like he normally would, he nods slowly, “Yeah, that’s a plan.  I’ll take a look and meet you back, okay?”

Sam nods gratefully, noting that the officer they’d spoken to his already wandered off to supervise one of the forensic crews.  He looks around, wondering where the best place is to start.  The elder of the two takes a deep breath and walks into the diner.

The first thing to hit him is the smell.  They dropped the temperature to mimic that of a refrigerator, which went a good distance toward keeping down the odor of decay.  Even so, that many open body cavities, filled with the things that bodies are full of, weight the air with a pungent, earthy smell of metallic blood and waste.  Dean grips the doorframe as he looks around at the well-lit, neatly gridded and labelled carnage.  A few bodies are whole, and others have been reduced to an organic mass of unrecognizable pieces.  The heads, he realizes suddenly, the heads are all intact though not necessarily attached to their bodies.

He feels his stomach roiling, but he struggles to keep it under control.  He is a hardened hunter.  He’s been through Hell, literally.

The problem, really, is that it bears more than a passing resemblance to Hell.  This is certainly the work of a demon, a creative, powerful, angry demon.  It reminds him of the murals of writhing, tortured bodies, the flayed, screaming souls.  It conjures up the taste of his own blood in his mouth, the mirror placed in front of him so he could watch himself scream, sob, and break as Alistair methodically took him him apart.

It’s all black and red and adipose yellow-gray.  It’s all charred and flayed, and the walls are closer than they should be, the shadows aren’t where they seem like they should be.  His breathing comes hard and fast as terror grips his heart, adrenaline constricting his throat and lungs so that he can barely force out his labored breaths.

_This is hell.  This is hell.  This. Is. Hell._

And in his mind he’s back, with no end in sight.  That was the worst part of Hell.  The knowledge that it spanned for eternity in any direction, that it had happened for a million years before him and would continue for a million years after.  No one was coming to save him, and nothing would alleviate the pain and the darkness.  Even if he managed to cut off Allistair’s evil head and stop that slick voice crooning disgusting endearments, another demon would have stepped up to continue.  And another after him, an eternal line of torturers and darkness. That was why he had broken.  The endlessness had worn him down and he’d realized that it would happen eventually, he would give in one day, and there was no reason why today couldn’t be that day. He hated himself for breaking, hated himself for liking the power he felt when he tortured souls on the rack and flayed his own soul apart by association.  Pain, pain, pain. Anger.

He looks at the bodies and the grid lines again, reminding himself that there was no lighting like this in hell, that there weren’t men in plastic labcoats and blue sterile gloves in Hell.  There weren’t cameras and iPhones and tablets in Hell.  This is just a massacre on Earth, this is just something horrible at home. This is just another day in another Apocalypse that he and Sam and Cas are gonna clean up.

He takes a calming breath, forcing himself to relax.  Closing his eyes, he pushes back the nightmares of Hell and tries to ignore the smell by breathing through his mouth.  He feels his legs shaking, but he feels steadier.

He opens his eyes again and he thinks he might be all right.  Until he sees that the decomposition is generating heat, and that heat rising from one of the corpses is fogging the window.  It conjures up a memory so horrific that he bolts, breaking out into the night air and crumpling to the ground against the building’s brick facade.  

_God, Sam, help me.  Cas, please.  You need to get me out of here, I can’t do this again.  I can’t do Hell.  I can’t, please, I’m sorry, don’t send me there again._

He feels a white light, tinged with a soft, starlit blue, that warms him and burns away the darkness and the blood, smoothing the sharp edges and soothing the jagged pain that he can’t forget.  The light is familiar, but he can’t place it.  He fought it at first last time because he was too far gone to know better, he struck out at it before it overwhelmed him and engulfed him and seamed together enough of the shredded pieces to remember who he was.  He remembers the sensation like trying unsuccessfully to remember a word at the tip of his tongue.  The word is Castiel, and he knows that he is remembering some flicker of being lifted from perdition, but the actual memory, the safety of being wrapped in his grace, still stays just out of his reach.

Warm hands are gripping his shoulders, and he opens his eyes to see the angel in question staring at him with a look of open concern.  They both know that it has been a long time since Dean has had a debilitating flashback of Hell, and neither wants to consider the thought of that psychic wound being reopened.  He rubs Dean’s arm lightly through his thick coat, then looks up at a police officer who has hurried over to check on the tall, confident FBI agent who is drawn up into fetal position in front of the diner.

Castiel waves him off with a quiet explanation.

“He served in Afghanistan and occasionally suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The man nods and walks away, uncomfortable with the thought of a mentally scarred veteran and wanting distance.  Castiel had learned that those who did not fight were always slightly mistrustful of those who did; claiming a war injury was an easy way to end an unwanted conversation.

“Have to go back in there, Cas,” Dean breathes, pinching the bridge of his nose and forcing himself to uncurl his cramping limbs.

“I’m not certain that is wise, Dean.”

“Gotta do it.  I need to take care of this.  Gotta… just get it done.  Stare it down.”

The archangel sighs, then climbs to his feet.  He doesn't want to let Dean walk back in to a severe mental break down, but he also knows that Dean will never allow himself to back down.  Wrapping his hand around Dean’s forearm, he pulls him to his feet and steadies him when his knees threaten to buckle.  To an outsider, the grip on his shoulder would seem light and steadying; in reality, Castiel is forcefully keeping him on his feet as he sways.

“I’ll come with you,” he looks him over appraisingly, then reminds him, “Nothing can hurt you while I’m with you.”

Dean nods and licks his lips.  He still feels as though he might throw up, but the worst of the panic has passed.  What remains now is the fear hangover, the spent adrenaline, the weak-limbs, the weariness.  _Weakness._ He wants to wrap his arm around Castiel’s waist and hold himself there, absorbing the angel’s warmth and strength for himself.  He wants to tell him that he almost remembered this time when their soul and grace touched.

Instead, he just nods again and says, “Yeah, got it.”

They walk into the diner together again; this time, Castiel stays beside him.  As they walk through the carefully cleared walkways, Dean starts to shake again.  It begins as a quiver in his fingertips and builds to a subtle quaking, punctuated by an occasion shudder.  His lover touches his arm, fortifying him and reminding him of his presence, and the hunter keeps moving in, deeper into the horror.

Dean has a good memory - photographic - and is able to recollect very minute details.  He used to play at it as a kid, memorizing sections of books or forcing himself to notice and describe all of the people who had been in a restaurant or grocery store.  Sometimes when he remembered something, like a snippet of lore or a symbol from a book, John had been openly proud of him.  Said he needed him, or that no one else would have noticed something like that.  Dean liked it and pushed himself harder and further.  He didn’t have a great deal of book learning and he’d never go to college, but he could sure memorize a sigil or pick out a girl from a section of tattered photo.  He never counts it among his skills, which he chronically undervalues, but it is nonetheless one that he leans on heavily as a hunter.

As he looks over the bodies, he can easily picture the labelled photographs.  He can visualize and note where the technicians have started cleaning up and transporting the corpses away.  He looks for the things that weren't clear in the photos, the things that law enforcement and forensics don't know to look for.  Breaking it down into something analytical, looking at the bodies as pieces in a puzzle, he begins to focus and settle.

"What are you looking for?" Castiel asks quietly from just behind him.

"I wanna confirm it's Abaddon."

"I can tell you that it was.  I can smell her."

Dean looks down at him, eyebrows raised, "Yeah?  So what's this about?  Like a spell or something? Like is this something big?"

Cas looks around calculatingly, "I'm not certain, Dean."

He breaks away from him, staying in the designated paths through the carnage.  The hunter watches him for a moment, then continues his own search without really knowing what he expects to find.  He knows it when he sees it, though.  

There is a portion of a body, hips-down of a medium-height man.  It's different from the others in that it is fresher.  Dean knows that it wasn't in the photographs.  He would have remembered a corpse that looked like it had been cartoonish lay bitten in half at the waist by a shark. He crouches down carefully beside the body and examines the still glistening wounds, feeling an uncomfortable roll in his stomach.  The marks are familiar, and to his chagrin he sees that a few of the nearby corpses have similar.

As if trying to make the answer obvious, there were also splatters of a telltale viscous black liquid on the floor - the poor bastard had fought back before being monster chow and had drawn blood.  Thick, glossy black blood.

He groans aloud, "Leviathan."

Castiel is by his side again immediately, steadying him as he stood.  He won’t admit it, but he is thankful for the angel's firm hand at his shoulder to keep him from stumbling or falling into the mess.

"You find anything?" Dean asks quietly.

"Yes."

"Then let's get the fuck out of here.  I'm gonna puke."

Outside, Dean follows the example of law enforcement and promptly vomits into the specified trash bin.  He's thankful that they hadn't really gone for a serious breakfast.  More than that, he's thankful that he is still human enough to be sick at the sight of such visceral horrors.  Sometimes he worries still that the part of him that recognizes and cares about people is still broken from his time in Hell; as awful as losing it in public is, it's preferable to not caring.

Castiel offers him a bottle of water ( _probably conjured from angelic hyperspace or something,_ he considers), and he takes it gratefully.  He first rinses his mouth, then takes several long, steady swallows.  This isn't Hell.  No clean water in Hell, after all.  No one to rub your shoulder in that loving-but-appropriate-in-public way in Hell.

"Whoa, Dean!" Sam says from his left, "You look like-"

He lifts his hand to silence him.  Maybe he's going to say 'crap' or 'shit' or 'death warmed over,' but the idea of Sam finishing that sentence with "Hell" is more than the elder hunter can stomach.

Cas nods to the taller man and says, "We have everything we need from here, I suggest that we go."

The look that he gives Sam is not subtle.  While Castiel's normal conversational expressions could be nuanced and difficult to read, he could be almost comically obvious when he was making a conscious effort to communicate.  Now, with his eyebrows raised and his eyes slightly widened as he leans forward meaningfully, Sam can only be thankful that he's out of Dean's line of vision.

"Ah, yeah... We should move.  I talked to a couple forensics guys and officers - only possible lead is the eye witness, but I guess he's in meltdown."

"Well, sounds like he saw the bitch's real face-"

"He may never recover," Castiel interrupts as they walk to the impala, "Humans are not meant to see the true form of demons, that is doubly true for a creature like Abaddon."

Sam and Dean consider that in silence.  Dean slides into the driver's seat and shivers at the cold that seems to instantly permeate his thin suit trousers.  _Freaking winter, man._

Clipping his seatbelt into place, Sam asks, "So... If she's showing her demon face and we can't look at her without -I dunno - going crazy, how are we supposed to kill her?"

Dean wants to make some brash, manly claim that he could handle it, but doesn't have the heart.  He knows demons and they are fresh in his mind.  Castiel had explained to him once that Hell didn't look the way he remembered it; that his human brain had given it a shape that it could understand, the way that the waking mind imposes order on the memories of dreams to create coherent narratives. He couldn't really understand the true nature of Hell or what had happened to his soul at the hands of his demonic torturers, but his memories set the right mood.  Seeing a demon plainly, with his human mind, would probably trigger every image of Hell in its true form and he was heart would probably stop.

He grips the steering wheel restlessly for a moment, then turns the key in the ignition.  

From the back seat, Castiel replies, "I may have to do it alone."

"Like fuck you will," Dean snaps unexpectedly, "We'll do some freaking Perseus and Medusa mirror shit if we have to... But.  _Like fuck_ , Cas. God, what the hell is wrong with you."

Cas just raises his eyebrows at Dean's outburst, knowing that it was motivated by lingering fear rather than actual anger.  With Dean he often found that it is better to to assume that he is just generically angry at any given time, rather than specifically angry with him or his choices.  It makes Dean much easier to get along with because Dean is always angry, even when he's happy; it's far better not to take it too personally.

Nonetheless, he sighs weightily.

Sam clears his throat awkwardly and says, "So, did you guys find anything?"

"Well, Abaddon blew outta here, but we got other problems.  Leviathan's treating that diner like an all-you-can-eat buffet."

"Leviathan?" Sam asks, alarmed, "You sure?  Leviathan don't usually go for dead meat, though.  You sure it's not a ghoul?"

"Yeah... There are chomper bitemarks, and it took out a tech.  There was some black goo. Definitely Leviathan."

"Crap, Dean.  Freaking Milford is like the town of hard to kill asshole monsters."

"'Least Abaddon's gone," Dean points out.  He glances at Cas in the rear view mirror and feels an annoyingly warm fuzzy when he meets his gaze. _Dammit, Dean, you freaked out and puked in the last half hour, no need to add being super friggin' girly and mooning over a stupid angel to the list. Gonna get your period by noon at this rate._

"Cas, man, you said you found something?" Dean asks wearily.  

"I took a few cell phone," he replies, holding up 4 smart phones fanned out like a hand of cards.  Their screens are black and shattered; the two lighter colored phones have obvious burn marks around the camera lens.

“Broken cell phones… okay, good work, buddy. This is something we can work with,” Dean says uncertainly, trying to be positive.  He resettles his hands on the wheel, momentarily uncertain as to where they should be headed.  “ _Is_ this something we can work with?”

“Yes,” the angel affirms, holding one of the ones up alone for Sam’s interested perusal, “A camera can’t record an image of a demon’s true form… these four phones were burned up from the inside because their owners tried to photograph Abaddon.”

“Okay… so…” Sam began, trying to play along, “How’s that help us?  They’re just, dead. Not like we can just turn them back on.”

The archangel smiled slightly; sometimes the humans in his care really are uncreative despite being some of the most fascinating specimens he’s met.  He taps his fingertip against the broken screen, then holds it up for Sam to see.  With his gentle attention, the device has been mended and carefully restored.  He powers it on, then tabs through the menus.  While Charlie teases him occasionally about his lack of technical prowess, the angel is a quick study and has had ample opportunity to play with Dean and Sam’s electronic toys; finding a photo or video on an iPhone is hardly taxing to a creature of his intelligence.

The last video on the first phone is just about two minutes long.  He looks at the men in the front seat, then back down to the screen before pressing play.

It’s muffled, with that scraping, bumping quality of surreptitious filming.  On screen, the view is mostly the underside of a table.  Bodies from the waist down, primarily, some still and pressing back against the walls, some attempting to run.  There is a terrifying, silken voice speaking a language that isn’t English and isn’t even human - “Enochian,” Castiel murmurs - and then a pained scream the cuts off quietly, followed by panicked shouts and terrified gasps.  The sound of chairs being shoved back from tables, a few brave men yelling for everyone to stay calm, then the sounds of choking and the indistinct but unmistakable sound of bodies hitting a tile floor.

Abaddon calls, laughing in her darkly seductive way, though the sound turns angry and inhuman, deepening and turning into something that doesn’t even quite sound like a voice.  The video quality suffers a sudden surge of static, and the screaming behinds in earnest.  She’s yelling, or maybe just calmly speaking in a forceful voice, and there are an assortment of terrible sounds.  The lack of clarity is a blessing, though Castiel listens carefully with his eyes on the screen.  Finally, the camera perspective changes as the phone is lifted above the table.  Abaddon is there, center stage, beautiful and exotic like a corpse with perfect makeup.  Then at at once, that image is replaced by something unspeakably horrible.  

The camera captures it only for a millionth of a second before the video cuts out, but it still makes the angel’s breath catch.  He exhales forcefully, and looks back to the men in the front seat, who have gone pale again just listening.

“What… did you find out, Cas?” Dean asks carefully, not looking at him.

“She’s angry.  She did this because she’s angry and this is… fun… there’s…” he licks his lips, “There’s no other reason.”

He tosses the phone aside in revulsion, the screen again blackened, dark, and broken.  The Winchesters are reassured that Abaddon isn’t using these victims as some sort of grandiose sacrifice to enact a powerful spell.  However, the idea that this is just a Knight of Hell having a tantrum is simultaneously a thousand times worse; if there had been a reason, then they wouldn’t have to worry about an encore.  However, this was a fearless act, a confident bit of hedonism that expected no retribution.  This was the sort of thing that could happen again and again, anywhere, without provocation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late with this week's chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

The thing that frustrates Allison the most is that she can't ask the questions that would give her the answers that she needs; the story that she created upon meeting the Winchesters didn't allow for the kind of knowledge that she already has, nor does it explain and overwhelming and detailed interest in angels.  If she were to ask specific questions about vessels, she might betray that she is a vessel herself; if she were to ask about prayer and summoning angels, it would beg the question of _why_ she would want to call her supposed kidnapper.

Gadreel had given her an in, though.  In giving her an annotated book of lore, he has casually conferred upon her the ability to ask high-level, fact-based questions about both angels in general and Arakiel in particular.  The book itself answers a number of questions on its own, owing both to the typed words and the notes that the household's disposed angel has packed into almost every available white space; she is delighted by Gadreel's tight, careful copperplate handwriting in the margins, which politely and formally offer corrections and additional information ("I'm sorry, but this is pure ignorance" one note begins, making her smile). She hasn't reached them yet, but toward the end there are several handwritten sheets tucked into the pages.

It amuses her to find that Gadreel is only a footnote in the chapter about known, biblically named angels.  The man was obviously offended by this, for both the inner and outer margins are filled with expansive notes that detail his personal history, fall, and current condition.  Other angels have similarly thorough notes, in some cases making reference to comparative size and strength.  Several have descriptions of their true forms, which are fascinating but difficult to imagine.  Even the biggest CG movie monsters seem to top out at the size of sky scrapers, and it's hard to visualize the head circumference or wingspan of a creature bigger than even _Pacific Rim_ 's largest kaiju.

"Your wings were green and gold?" she asks lazily, glancing up at him.  She has a hard time reading him or gauging his reactions to things, but she feels as though personal conversation is the way to engage him; even though he is no longer an angel, he has obvious pride in what he was and in his fellow angels.  As she absently fiddles with a frayed corner of the cloth-covered binding, she decides to pursue him by flattering him and offering the opportunity to share his own story.  Men like that, in her opinion, and he certainly looks like a man to her.

His angular jaw tightens, but he nods.  He only briefly lifts his deeply saturated eyes to her before looking away in obvious discomfort.  The loss of his wings still weighs on him.

She watches him a moment longer, debating her strategy.  Perhaps he's shy, and perhaps it's a sore subject.  Not wanting him to shut her out, she just says consolingly, "The sound beautiful."

She looks back to the book, excusing him from expanding on his answer.  There are plenty of things to read and absorb, and Gadreel's handwriting is as easy to read as typewriter text.  Arakiel's section is rather detailed, from his history to his form.  One of the two hundred angels who fell for Lucifer, the first and most loyal, destined to fight by his side in his first campaign on earth.  Captured and imprisoned before he could join him, locked away for thousands of years.

"Why didn't Lucifer free Arakiel when he was freed a few years ago?"

That is a safer topic, it seems, for Gadreel answers her more freely.  "I don't know; it would have had strategic merit.  However, Arakiel's devotion may not have been reciprocated.  It's possible that he had forgotten her, or perhaps he just didn't have opportunity..."

Gadreel shrugs his broad shoulders and Allison licks her lips calculatingly, "You say 'she' sometimes and 'he' others,"

"Angels are neither gender; in English it's easier to use a gendered pronoun.  'It' sounds impersonal and 'they' is plural."

"So you aren't really male?"

He looks at her curiously, surprised by the question.  His knowledge of human culture, American culture, is still rather limited.  However, in his experience, gender, sex, and sexuality are topics that are reserved for medical personnel and closer relationships; he can't help but feel lightly scandalized that Allison is asking so freely and acting as though she is entitled to his response.  

"I'm no longer an angel and this human body is male.  I am therefore male."

"But you could have just as easily been a girl."

"Yes."

She thinks about Gadreel in this strong, handsome male body, then tries to imagine the same personality in a female body.  It doesn't fit.  It isn't as though she hasn't known strong women or more sensitive men, only that the blond seems to fit everything she has codified as male.  Some of it, she's certain, comes from learning from the Winchester's example; they seem like two alpha male sorts, the big manly strapping action hero types.

"Huh," she comments before returning to her reading.

Gadreel looks at her for a moment, his expression curious.  He doesn't understand her interest in him, being oblivious to her budding physical attraction and her present fixation on angels.  He is quiet as he tries to sort through what a noncommittal "huh" could mean.

"Why do you ask?" He asks finally.

It's the first he's question he's asked, rather than just reacting to her curiosity.  Pleased to have caught his attention even for a moment, she replies, "It's just... I don't know.  Interesting.  Why'd you choose a male body?"

"It was the first vessel I found that could contain me," he admits, "And had nothing to do with any affinity or even aesthetic appreciation."

Allison has a few thoughts on aesthetic appreciation, but for the moment she puts them aside, "What d'you mean about containing you?"

"Some angels are bigger than others, and more powerful... Especially old angels.  I was a powerful angel."

"What makes a vessel different?" she asks, "Like... What makes one better than another, and like..."

She hesitates a bit on the next word.

" _Special_?"

"It's just how they're made, certain bloodlines have the power to withstand grace.  Some have stronger blood, bones."

Allison reflects on Gadreel's perfect notes on Arakiel's form and strength, her six broad wings in a burning violet that doesn't occur anywhere in nature.  A violet that almost sears the eyes.  She thinks of the power of that creature and imagines it folding itself over many times, coiling itself into her petite frame.  

 _I'm special.  I'm amazing._ She thinks in sudden wonder, her pride swelling within her to a point where she has to struggle to keep her face from lighting up at the affirmation.

She nods slowly, trying to be subtle, "So it goes in bloodlines.  Okay.  So each angel has a bloodline... that body was in yours?  Is it like a great-great-great-times-a-million grandson you're in?"

"This body wasn't my bloodline; my bloodline was terminated, as was Arakiel's.  We can use other vessels, but they have to be especially strong to withstand the incompatibility."

"Oh," she replies. _I'm **especially** strong_.

She's always thought that, though.  She's always thought that she must be destined for greatness, and that there is something in her that is intended for something better.  Different from other people.  For a time she'd gotten discouraged by the world and her place in it, she'd settled for a string of lackluster boyfriends and a course of study that would most likely land her steady, unrewarding employment.  It seemed like it was just the way things were for women and no one had ever really bothered to tell her otherwise.

Arakiel had made her all but forget those possible futures.  College and graduation and relationships with frat boys seem so far away, like it was ages and ages ago, or like she is recalling a rapidly fading memory of a dream.  It just doesn’t matter to her now.  

She hopes that Arakiel will come when she calls him because she doesn’t know what else to do with her life.  While she has a passing interesting in Gadreel, he can never give her what she wants, even if she is intuitively drawn to his absent light.  

Allison fingers the edge of the book, licking her lips as she watches the blond opposite her.

If Arakiel doesn’t come for her, maybe she can be a hunter.

 

\-------------

 

Dean is still rattled by the crime scene.  The images of death and dismemberment aren't exactly new to either of the Winchesters, but this particular combination of horrors has dredged up deeper memories, ones that he has invested a great deal of alcohol and vice into repressing.  Though he is outwardly calm, vague recollections and unwanted visuals bleed in at the edges of his consciousness.

He swings wildly between stony silences and frantic bouts of unrelated, avoidant conversation.  One moment he is complaining about the cold, the next he is staring down other morning drivers, the next he is talking technical points of monster hunting.  Both of his companions know, to one degree or another, that something has set him off; he's not used people seeing through his manly bravado so easily, and as a result feels exposed and awkward.  Even so, he can't stop pretending.

"So, yeah, I'm pretty sure that Leviathan'll be back around tonight, so if we just camp out with a Supersoaker of borax and a machete, we should be good to head out in the morning, yeah?"

His voice sounds sharp and thin to his ears and he almost laughs to try to cover it, but doesn't want that to come out high or nervous either.  So he leaves off there, and though the pause between his question and Sam's response is only half a beat, it seems longer and more awkward to him.

"Yeah, I think so.  It'll prolly go to finish off that tech since he would be the, uh, freshest thing there."

Sam seems uncomfortable, but it is with the people-eating aspects of the evening rather than his brother's obvious PTSD. Things that eat people, particularly if they leave a mess, always leave the younger Winchester’s skin crawling.  They're not actually human so it isn't technically cannibalism, but it still scores high on his Creep-o-Meter.

Dean nods decisively, as though Sam's agreement made it fact.  With that settled, there was still a lot of day to account for and still a healthy amount of time to steel himself to return to the site.  He doesn't know how it will be different or how he will react on second exposure.  A change in lighting won't change the resemblance to Hell - it wasn't like they didn't mix things up with the atmosphere in the pit.  Sometimes it had been grimy and dim like something out of Silent Hill, sometimes it had been bright and clinical so that he could see exactly what they were doing to him.  Sometimes it had been pitch black, and all he could do was wait and wonder if anyone was there.  Sometimes he waited for days between pinpricks as they slowly, slowly took him apart.

He swallows hard and says brightly, "S'pretty early still, what do you wanna do today?"

"I dunno... Not exactly like there's a lot going on other than the case, y'know? There's nothing really in Milford,"

"We're not far from the ocean," the angel in the back seat suggests unexpectedly, "You could go there."

Castiel likes the ocean.  Most angels do, owing to the depth, power, and purifying salt.  It isn't uncommon to find angels near the coasts, listening to the eternal, rhythmic roll of the waves or wandering the beaches.  Cas can recall millions of sunrises over water, most of which looked largely same for thousands of years.  He knows exactly how it feels to have water wrap around his limbs and cool the burning star at his core, slip between his many fingers and crystallize salt between the barbs of his feathers.  He had spent years underwater, just listening or feeling, and surfaced to find the world changed and the same.

“It’s February,” Dean points out, “Not exactly beach weather.”

“Oh. I might go on my own,” Cas tells them, though he is unlikely to leave Dean at this moment unless the hunter sends him off.  Even though the thought is somewhat appealing, his voice is devoid of judgment or petulance.  The cold obviously wouldn’t bother him in the least, but he recognizes that his companions can't say the same.  In retrospect, Cas realizes that he is thinking primarily of things that comfort him; there is no guarantee that something like that would have a positive effect on Dean.  He still doesn't really understand the human mind, and he is at a complete loss as to how to soothe Dean or heal his injured psyche.  While Sam recognizes that his brother was shaken by the carnage, he isn't aware of the depth of his distress.  The crime scene has reopened a deep wound that Dean is likely going to try to sucher with alcohol and machismo.

Sam turns and slings an arm over the back of the seat, smiling slightly at their angel, as he says brightly, “It’s a cool idea though.  I mean, probably better than anything in town. You should go too, Dean."

Dean looks over at him incredulously.

"Sam, it's like 10 degrees out."

"You've got a coat."

The angel smiles slightly, appreciating that Sam is trying to goad Dean into being companionable. It's not completely appropriate now for Sam to press him, but Castiel knows that the more self-destructive Winchester shouldn't be left to his own coping devices, particularly in a small town with few distractions other than cheap alcohol.  He decides to join in on Sam's plan, though they have different reasons.  If he's honest, his own reasons are only partly altruistic; he's not sure why he is so intent on Dean's attention or why he suddenly feels entitled to his affection.  If he presses the hunter to join him, it will mark he second time in 24 hours that he has openly sought Dean's company.  

"You won't be cold, Dean-"

Sam can't help himself.  He chips in cheerfully, "-Cas'll keep you warm."

The archangel doesn't know the loaded meaning of that particular phrase, so he perks up and agrees, "I will ensure that the cold doesn't touch you."

Dean's cheeks, meantime, are burning.  He looks hatefully over at his brother, then scoldingly at his lover's reflection in the rear view mirror.  It's foolish to think that the two of them will just drop it and leave him alone - Cas wants to coddle him or something and Sam wants Dean to go make out with Cas on a frozen beach like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel.  He doesn't get how Sam manages to forget that that isn't how _men_ freaking act around each other.  He licks his lips and says, "Yeah, okay.  Fine.  I'll go to the freaking beach."

"You can drop me at the motel," Sam offers.

For a moment, Dean considers dragging his baby brother out into the cold with them, but the thought of having to deal with any sort of relationship suggestions or meaningful looks from Sam makes him want to punch someone.  He's tense and he knows it, and he knows that it is absolutely not the time for Sam to be dangling himself in front of him like a giant, smug piñata. He'd love to hit something.

"Yeah, right.  You gonna just bum around or something?"

"Yeah, m'actually kinda tired... I slept like crap.  I also wanna call Charlie and get her to check out other Leviathan sightings.  Like, y'know, see if this is an isolated thing.  I haven’t seen any if these things otherwise since you nailed Dick."

Dean smirks in spite of himself - there is something about Dick Roman jokes that allow them to remain a guilty pleasure.  They'd been making juvenile puns since they learned the black-hearted creature's name, and though they were often jokes at the expense at his supposed heterosexuality, they somehow sidestepped getting Dean's hackles up.  "Dick jokes" weren't gay at all.

"I'd like to think that other hunters have been cleaning up any stragglers after Dick went down."

"Yeah, same.  Still, I don't think we ever figured out it they go out on their own, or if are more of a pack animal creature thing.  I just wanna make sure."

Castiel notes with a certain pride that Sam has grown into his role as a Man of Letters perfectly.  Dean called himself one, and he did diligently review the repository of data available to inhabitants of the illustrious bunker, but he was still in most ways more of a hunter than a scholar.  The angel would never say that Dean wasn't ridiculously intelligent, but he lacks a certain studious thirst for knowledge that had always been one of Sam's defining characteristics.  Sam, by his very nature and the questions that his mind naturally poses, is a born academic.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense.  We should know if there's gonna be more than one," Dean agrees.

"Traditionally, we have observed that the Leviathan are intensely hierarchical," Cas points out from the back, "Without their natural order, they seem to be rather ineffective and completely reliant on their physical invulnerabilities."

"Man though!" Dean laughs, shaking his head, "That is enough sometimes!"

The easy way that they trade off is more than just a function of being friends or lovers. Listening to them, Sam can hear a certain familiarity that comes from being brothers-in-arms.  Not for the first time, he finds his thoughts straying to the year that they spent in Purgatory.  It's something that neither of them have talked about in any great detail, if at all.  Sam is aware that their time there ended badly, but he has always wondered about what they saw and what they fought; his own jaunt through the misty, monster-filled woods to retrieve Bobby's soul from Hell had left him curious but uneager for a second visit.

It doesn't take long to drop off Sam and soon they're on the road again.  This time, Cas rides comfortably in the front seat and just chats with him about nothing.  He knows what his normally laconic companion is doing; he's avoiding the topic of his earlier flashback while keeping him engaged in conversation just deeply enough to keep his mind from wandering back to unwanted memories.  He grips the steering wheel in mild annoyance while Castiel asks his opinion on current events, knowing that his companion is only asking him questions to force him to talk and doesn't know or care about politics or celebrities. For a brilliant little mind-creature, Cas can be ridiculously transparent.

"So why the ocean, Cas?” he asks abruptly, tired of defending his position on why the Olympics were stupid and didn’t belong on every single channel, “Of all places to go in the friggin' dead of winter, why'd you wanna go to the beach?"

"I like the ocean," he says earnestly, "It soothes me.  I thought it might do the same for you."

"I don't need soothing," Dean grumbles, adjusting his grip on the wheel, widening it.  There's a vague, directionlessly menacing quality to the gesture that Castiel notices but can't be concerned by; he knows him well enough to know that any annoyance is directed inward, despite appearances.

The archangel turns his head to look at him intently, letting the silence linger for a moment as a passive way of expressing his disagreement.  The intensity only serves to irritate Dean further; he hates when his lover expresses a strong opinion without giving him anything to argue with.  

"I don't!" he huffs a bit more vehemently, glancing over at his lover's stoic face.  When the archangel just continues to stare him down, his cheeks get a little red and he growls, "Would you quit looking at me like that?"

Cas sighs, "Earlier, you were obviously-"

Dean defensively expounds on his previous statement, "Yeah, but I don't need _soothing_.  I mean, it was _years_ ago now, Cas.  I'm over it.  Seriously.  I mean, come on."

"Men who serve in war often take a lifetime to recover, Dean.  You spent forty years in hell."

"I'm fine.  I hadn't even thought about it in practically forever."

Castiel is silent.  Instead of speaking, he reaches over and lays his hand on Dean's where it rests on the steering wheel.  Dean initially bristles, thinking that the angel is pitying him, but settles almost immediately when he realizes that the contact is unexpectedly welcome. Whether he wants to admit it or not, his companion's touch is calming.  

He hadn't even realized that he was anything other than calm.

It tags that almost-remembering sensation again.  He has the image of being interrupted, being angry at the interruption.   _I'm here to take you home._ He can't remember the voice, but he knows that there must have been one because there were words. _Go away, I'm busy.  I have work to do._ He vaguely remembers fighting, his own not-voice almost vicious. There was a cleansing, grounding, burning touch that was simultaneously like falling asleep and waking up.

He strains to remember; fortunately it's a quiet, straight road because for a moment the effort engrosses his full attention.  No matter how hard he tries, though, he can't bring the memory into focus; it is as though Castiel has been surgically removed from his salvation.

"You're thinking about it now," Castiel says quietly.  

Dean realizes suddenly that his lover's hand isn't just resting on his, it's actually steadying the wheel.  He shakes it off, blinking rapidly several times to clear his vision.

"What are you remembering?"

"I'm _not_ ," Dean says, frustrated.  Before Castiel can argue, he growls, "I remember everything about Hell except you."

That surprises the angel.  He is quiet again for a moment before he reminds him, "You've never remembered me."

"And why the hell is that?" Dean asks sharply, "All the shit I did, all the shit that was done to me... I remember that.  Years and years of it.  But I can't remember when you showed up to yank me out.  I can't remember how it ended."

"And that bothers you."

"Yeah, it bothers me!" he exclaims in annoyance, as though Cas should understand that, "I dunno how you put me back together or how you got me to go with you.  I was pretty freaking far gone by then, y’know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So how’d that all work out?  I mean, I was fucked up.  Like _really fucked up_."

“You were.”

"So how'd you make me back into a person?  How do I know you put me back together right?"  Dean demands, agitatedly resettling his hands on the wheel again, "I mean, I'm not _right_ Cas."

"You are you, Dean, if that's what you're concerned about.  The human soul is resilient.  Even a demon's soul is warped, rather than broken, and can be set to rights.  You know that."

"So what, I was a demon and you just angel-glued me back together?"

"You weren't a demon.  Not yet."

"Not yet."

"No."

"But I was close?"

"Dean.  Stop.  You weren't a demon then and you aren't now.  That isn't what you're feeling.  It is the opposite of what you're feeling."

Dean falls silent, even though his instinct is to buck anytime someone tells him to stop.  He's always been unsettled by the fact that he doesn't recall his departure from Hell, and somehow the juxtaposition of his flashback and his conversation with Sam about souls and grace has left him feeling raw and untrusting.

"So that's it.  You just walked in, saw me being a demonic bastard, and just said 'well giddy up?'  I mean, come on Cas.  You told me it was when you... y'know.  Decided I was pretty great-"

"When I decided I loved you," Cas amends patiently.

"Yeah.   _That_.  What, you're just into messed up shitheads?  You thought 'I totally get hot for a guy who can disembowel a-"

" _Dean_."

The hunter continues, undeterred, "And you said before that I told you I, y'know, reciprocated.  My soul did.  Shouldn't I remember that?  I mean, that's... that's big."

Castiel is quiet for a long moment, thinking over the moment in question.  There aren't many secrets anymore between himself and the hunter, and most of the ones that remain do so out of complacency rather than an actual desire to mislead.  Where once he had been forbidden to explain, now he just hasn’t thought to bring it up.  There was never a natural moment in conversation.  Considering it now, he isn't certain that he wants to tell Dean that there is a reason why those moments are missing.

And it would be easy to just nod and say what he's always said in the past - that it's strange and unfortunate.  Still, in Dean's current state of agitation, he feels for the first time that the omission is dishonest.

He sighs and tells him quietly, "It was decided you shouldn't remember."

"What? By who."

"Whom," Cas corrects reflexively, then continues after Dean shoots him a murderous look, "Michael.  It was crucial that you should forget me because you were to be devoted completely to him."

Dean reels, and as always, his immediate reaction is anger.

"Well, maybe he coulda been the one to get me out, then.  Y'know, actually march his angelic ass into hell to fetch me.  Actually _freaking earn my loyalty_. Fucking asshole, what the fuck."

Castiel is accustomed to his beloved's righteous fury, but it seems as though something about this cuts close to the bone.  He understands why; on some level he has never recovered from losing that initial closeness.  He remembers knowing Dean and loving him, but seeing no recognition in the man's eyes when they met again on earth.  Even so, he couldn't stay away.  He remembers pushing down his own horror that the soul he loved would be swallowed up in an archangel's grace and he would never see him again.  He had lied by omission as much because Dean couldn't know his fate as because he couldn't bear the thought.

And then Dean had chosen him over Michael.  Not really, but the result was the same - it _felt_ like he was choosing him.  It meant that there was a chance, however slim, and that Castiel had something tangible that he could fight for.

"It ain't _fair_ ," Dean says with sudden, clear candor that surprises even him, "It ain't fair, Cas, that you did it - freaking pulled me out of Hell and died for me and fell and had all of this awful bullcrap happen to you over me - and I can't even remember what you looked like."

"It's not... It isn't really important, Dean," the angel murmurs, watching him quietly.  

"Don't even, man.  It's important.  If it wasn't,  I'd remember.  But like, it just - I mean yeah, I get it, you'n me are - _whatever we are_ and it's good, I like it - but like it's always been this huge thing and like an uphill battle to make it work and there's all this crap and lies and... I dunno, I just… I think it would have been different."

Castiel licks his dry lips.  What he's hearing - even though he vehemently tells himself that he's wrong - is that Dean wants to remember because he thinks that they would be able to be closer.  Maybe he could love him more.  Maybe all of the times Dean had told him ‘This time’s gonna be different’ would have actually been different.

He doesn't really know what to say.

"I can't restore your memory, Dean.  I’m not the one who took that from you,” he begins.

It's the wrong thing to say.  For whatever reason, Dean looks for a moment as though the angel had hit him - his mouth pressed and his bright green eyes widened minutely, then he just nods and focuses his full attention on the road ahead of them, leaving Cas to wonder if it is his fault or if he could have said something different.  His response was a hard truth, one that he doesn't like either, and he can't help but feel that Dean's reaction is somehow unfair.  Of course, Dean is often unfair and that is completely unlikely to change when he is already upset.

They pass the next half hour of the drive in silence, until they come up on the frozen beach with its rough, rolling, icy waves.

"Well, here's your damn beach," Dean mutters, staring out into the cold morning with obvious irritation.

Cas spares him a look, then climbs out of the car and stretches lazily.  He rolls his shoulders and then looks expectantly back into the car, fixing on its driver with a challenging look, commenting, "I know that you didn't want to come, but we're here now and I want your company."

With an exasperated huff - fine, he'd just freaking freeze to death so his feather-brained whatever can look at some water - he zips his jacket up all the way and climbs out of the car.  He stomps around to the other side of the car, gritting his teeth against the wind, and says, "Yeah, I'm here."

The angel smiles, and Dean notices suddenly that he no longer feels the wind or cold.  It is as though he's been wrapped in a thin blanket of summer air, even as he watches the wind whip the edges of the waves white and foamy.  He lets his shoulders drop, meeting Castiel's brilliant blue eyes - they are so much brighter now, like glass, since he'd become an archangel - and smirks.  The angel smiles back, knowing Dean isn't going to say anything nice if it means he'll have to stop sulking self-righteously.  It's strange how he knows all if Dean's awful behaviors but loves him anyway.

He turns and walks down from the parking lot to the shore, noting with pleasure how the texture of the sand changes under their feet from dry to wet and intermixed with shifting crystals of ice.  Dean follows him, less sure-footed on the uneven ground, watching Cas walk past him to walk out to where the waves lick up to his knees as they briskly roll in.

"I can barely look at you," Dean tells him, practically shivering at the mere thought of icy Atlantic soaking into his jeans and sloshing into his shoes.

Castiel laughs softly, then moves out deeper until he slips completely beneath the waves.  Dean, already rough-edged and slightly tender, is reminded uncomfortably of his lover walking out to his supposed death under leviathan control.  He recognizes that his lover is completely safe, but he's rarely seen Castiel in water in other circumstances.  With death, horror, and Leviathan on his mind, he shifts his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot in the unsupportive sand.

"C'mon Cas, quit with the weird shit.  Get out here."

A moment later, the drenched angel resurfaces, smiling as though it's his birthday.  He lets the water move him, his small human vessel rising and falling pleasurably with the waves.  He ducks beneath the surface again, then breaks through, soaked and glistening in the morning light.  Dean watches him play - knowing that the million year old moron is _playing_ \- and sighs, his shoulders relaxing finally.  It's almost pleasant to watch him, like watching the stars shine or a little kid playing in the mud.  Castiel meets his eyes and lets himself be called back, finally.  His feet touch the bottom and he wades leisurely toward him, his movements smooth and easy; as the depth lessens and his shoulders are exposed to the air, Dean realizes that his sharp, dark wings are on full display and heavy with the icy salt water.

The sight of Castiel's wings, especially stretched out to their full, impressive span, always makes Dean's breath catch.  It's undeniable in any situation that Castiel is far from human, but it's easy to pretend otherwise.  There is no pretending right now as he notes how this exact scenario makes him look impossibly ancient and slightly feral.  Seeing him smiling, soaked in icy water with his hair slicked back to his head and his clothes plastered to his body, Dean feels a thrill of delighted almost-fear at the otherness of him.  He sees the power in his movements as he walks through the choppy waves as smoothly as though he was walking in land, untouched by the hypothermic chill.  The strange realization dawns on him that this thing loves him - this inhuman, eternal creature who is frolicking in the freezing surf, soaked to the skin and alight with simple pleasure, had dragged him out of hell and devoted himself to him completely.

He walks back in toward Dean, his soaked clothes and trousers flapping wetly against his slim legs and faint steam emanating off of his overwarm body.  

"Jesus, Cas," Dean breathes, looking at the water running down his neck and the soft, wet points of his hair already freezing.  There is water in his eyelashes and feathers and it catches the dull, gray morning light.

Dean's impulse is to pull him close to try to warm him, but he knows that Cas isn't cold.  

"Don't swear," the angel tells him, reaching for his hand.  His fingers are cool and wet, breaking into Dean's bubble of false warmth.  He wants to protest that they shouldn't be holding hands, but the beach is empty - and even if it weren't, the angel's expansive black wings would be the only thing anyone noticed.

Dean sighs and tugs him closer, then pulls him to walk along the empty beach.  His lover's wet wings bob and shift as he lopes along, and he occasionally flicks them as the water drips ticklishly from the tips of his long feathers.

"I thought you liked warm," Dean says gruffly.

"I do prefer it, but I don't mind a cold sea."

"A friggin' ice cold sea," Dean amends, rubbing Cas's cool hand to warm it, "I mean, what the hell.  That felt good to you?"

"Yes."

Dean shakes his head disbelievingly, slowing his pace as they plod through the stiff, half-frozen sand.  He's eager to cover ground to satisfy the saline-saturated angel beside him, then to get back to the warm, familiar Impala.   He still feels no cold, as Cas promised, but he isn't really the 'romantic walks on the beach' type in any weather.  

Still, he doesn't have anything else to do till sundown and it's the least he can do for his stupid freaking angel.  For his part, Cas seems content to just walk beside him.  He actually seems happy.

Dean turns them about neatly once they have lost sight of the Impala and begins to loop back to their starting point.  

"In Hell," Cas begins unexpectedly when they are about half-way back, his voice soft, "You told me to leave you because you were where you belonged.  You said you deserved to be there, and that no one would ever come for you.  No one should ever come for you, because you were damned before you ever sold your soul."

Dean looks down at him, but Castiel is looking out across the water, "It was a very human thing to say.  No demon feels that it deserves any kind of punishment.  You were diligently flaying your own soul in tandem with the body on the rack - you couldn't see what you were doing to yourself, but you were cutting furrows into it and the light was slowly bleeding out.  Even so, you glowed so brightly.  Even in Hell, even as damaged as you were, you were a pure soul."

Cas stops and stands stock still, remembering, but still doesn't look at his beloved, "I told you again that it was time to leave, and you attacked me.  You were so small compared to me, but you were vicious, Dean.  You wounded me, but I laid my hands on your soul and burned away the darkness.  I seamed together the raw edges as best I could and made sure that none of hell was sewn up inside.  At the time I thought you hated me for it."

Dean stares at him, at a thorough loss for words.  He is simultaneously horrified and fascinated, ashamed of his behavior and impressed by his ability to wound an angel.

"And you still wanted me," he says skeptically, forcing a laugh.  

"Yes," Castiel replies, finally turning his bright eyes to him, "More than anything.  And when I held your soul and told you this, you told me yes.  That you would be mine, yes, that you loved me."

He sighs quietly, his fingers tightening slightly on Dean's hand.

"That's why you had to forget.  You couldn't say yes to Michael when you had already said yes to me."

Dean is stunned.  He stares at the angel, wondering what exactly that all meant.  The thought of all of it being true, and of just being all flat-out chick-flick "I love you forever" is completely alien to him.  Sure, he loves Cas - said it that morning, didn't he? - and he thinks he's pretty hot as he's looking at him now with his stupid wings and stupid wet hair.  But that's not like saying he belonged to him or that he would do whatever.  It isn't like saying yes the way Michael wanted him to say yes.  Not like how Sam had said yes to Lucifer.

"So... I was like," Dean attempts before shaking his head.  He presses his lips and almost-challenges, "Okay, Cas, this is kinda a lot. Like... Wow, okay."

The angel can't help but feel slightly stung by how Dean seems unwilling to believe that they could have had such a strong bond.  He hadn't expected to be simply brushed off. He licks his cool lips and says quietly, as though it explains everything, "There were no barriers between us then."

The words don't feel right in English, so he releases his hold on Dean's hand and resumes walking.  He says with some resignation, "Let's go back, Sam is waiting for us."

Dean abruptly realizes that he's wounded his lover; his wings are low and curved almost defensively and his soft mouth has that faint quiver that was about as far as he ever went toward a human display of emotion.  When Cas looks away, as though he doesn't want to see him, Dean knows that he said the wrong thing. Fucked up in a big way.

He scrambles to cover for his misstep.  He catches on to his sleeve and pulls him back, "Cas c'mon, I didn't mean like... like I didn't think it was true.  I mean... It's just a lot to know I don't remember. I mean..."

The angel looks up at him, skeptical now rather than heartbroken, and Dean forges on, "I'm pretty pissed with that dick Michael for taking that."

Castiel isn't stupid; he knows Dean is struggling with the idea of openly loving anyone, particularly the angel with whom he'd had a rocky on-and-off romance for five years.  It's at odds with who he thinks he is and who his father raised him to be.  He knows that by now, but still hates it.  If he's honest with himself, he actually hates Dean's posturing.  He hates John Winchester.

Still, he can appreciate that Dean cares enough to try to spare his feelings, and for that reason he doesn't call him out for lying.  

He doesn't answer, though.  And not willing to be brushed off himself, Dean drags him close, making a miserable sound at Cas's cold, wet clothing pressing up against him.  He can feel the icy water wicking through his clothes where they are mashed up against his wet coat.   _Goddamn stupid, wet fucking angel._

"C'mon, don't be like that."

Cas makes a face at him, but allows Dean to kiss him when he leans in close.  He grips the front of Dean's heavy coat and keeps him from pulling away again.  With his cold, damp brow leaning against his, he is still.

 _Don't talk to me like a girl you met at the bar.  Like we don't have anything.  'Baby don't be like that.'  Don't_ , he wants to warn him in a cold way that would surprise him, _Don't treat me like I'm stupid or I'm wrong._

But when he looks at Dean, even now he sees his soul.  They're separated by their bodies now, even pressed so close, and he wants nothing more than to feel his soul cradled within his grace again. Aloud, he quietly says, "I know you just can't understand."

"I want to," Dean says honestly.

"I know," he pulls back and takes Dean's hand loosely, half-wishing he hadn't told him about their original meeting.  He doesn't know now what he'd hoped to accomplish; the only benefit of his honesty is that there is one fewer secret mouldering between them.  Dean could use it against him later that he was keeping secrets.  Secrets were always a problem.  He gazes back out to the water longingly, then tells him, "Let's go."

"Goddammit, Cas," Dean breathes, unwilling to accept defeat. He just refuses to have a miserable trudge back to the car after the awful morning he's had already, and he likewise refuses to lose the ground he'd made that morning with Cas.  He has nothing but his put-on confidence and this angel, and he isn't going to let either go this morning.  He drags him close again and kisses him hard before telling him forcefully, "Look, I  said I love you.  This morning, I did.  It's not some big stupid fancy soul bonding... I dunno, _fireworks_ , but I meant it."

He realizes that love-fighting with his lover on an icy beach is probably not the way to go about this.  Dean is always slightly combative about affection without meaning to be, as though a forceful pre-emptive strike would keep him safe.  As though something hard like anger would give him the strength he needed if it all went wrong.

"I never said that to Lisa, okay, cause I didn't mean it. She'd say she loved me and I'd just say 'uh-huh' or 'you too.'  I never said it to nobody but you.  So don't act like that don't mean nothing, got it?"

Cas just looks back at him for a moment and Dean feels the icy fingers of uncertainty gripping his insides.  Or maybe Cas had just dropped the mojo that had been blocking the winter cold,who knows. The pause is long enough that Dean has time to worry that the angel is going to tell him to fuck off.  Of course, Cas doesn't often swear, so it was more likely he'd just vanish from his reality for a month, but a sharp little comment or a retraction of his undying affection seemed a possibility as well. 

Dean always thinks it's a possibility.  He never really believes him when he says forever, even when Cas crossly informs him that Dean doesn't even understand the meaning of the word.

It's only a few seconds, but Dean has time to think of a million rejections before Cas asks, "Why are you yelling at me?"

He smiles slightly and kisses him lightly on the mouth.  Dean practically slumps against him in relief, pulling him close and crushing his smaller, colder body against him.

"Always gotta yell at you for something," he says, kissing him quickly again.

He holds him there for a moment, feeling the heat of his body even through the waterlogged coat.  He kisses his frozen hair, then pulls back and asks, "You had enough of this place yet?"

Cas nods, though he could have easily spent hours.  Man had taken the land, but the oceans still belong to the angels - the depths are still their domain and the purifying salt is still theirs to make their feathers gleam.

"We can go.  I hope this wasn't too tedious for you."

"Nah, it was kinda cool, I guess," Dean admits grudgingly as they walk up the path from the beach toward the the parking area.  He casts a glance over his companion and says, "But just so y'know, you're not gettin' in the car like that."

The angel looks down at his wet, sandy clothes.  They have frozen stiff and whitish in places from the bitter winds, as have some of the longer pieces of his hair.  With a little smirk, he vanishes from sight, right out of Dean's hold.

The hunter rolls his eyes, wondering if he's managed to offend the angel again, and continues to the car.  He's reasonably sure that he'll find his lover waiting inside for him, but he quickens his pace slightly and groans in frustration when he doesn't see Castiel peering impatiently at him from the passenger seat.  Instead, as he reaches the car he finds the archangel stretched out in the broad back seat, completely nude.  His hair and skin are still slightly damp and slightly glistening, but his expression is quietly wicked when he catches Dean's eye.

" _Jesus_ , Cas!" Dean hisses, looking quickly and pointlessly up the empty rows of parking spaces as though a car full of Baptist ministers would have suddenly materialized two spaces down.

"My clothes were wet," he replies innocently, spreading his knees several degrees to give Dean an eye full.  The hunter had noted more than once that for someone so socially awkward and supposedly innocent in the ways of modern obscenity, Castiel knew how to hit the pinup poses like a champ.  

"For god's sake," Dean grumbles, already pulling off his own coat and overshirt as he stands beside the car, watching as his infuriatingly attractive angel drags his hand innocuously over the dip below his ribs and down over the sharp wings of his hips.

"We're in a goddamn parking lot in broad daylight!" he huffs as he throws his clothes into the front seat.  He undoes the front of his jeans before opening the back door and climbing in.

The angel drags him into his arms, snugging Dean's clothed body up against himself and hugging his hips with his long, bare thighs.  He applies an open-mouthed kiss to Dean's neck, remarking, "I can just get dressed if you'd prefer...?"

"Shut up," Dean tells him before kissing him hungrily, earning a muffled chuckle from the creature beneath him.

"Shut up," he repeats in response to Castiel's laugh, half-grinning himself, "I'm keepin' my clothes on, and if we get caught it's your freaking pasty bare ass on display."

Cas nods before kissing him again, tugging Dean's shirt untucked and sliding his still-chilly fingers up against his skin.  The hunter tenses and jerks at the sensation, grinding his hips against Castiel's.

He's screwed a lot of girls in the back seat of the Impala, so he's got the physics of it pretty well worked out.  It was a lot harder to translate that knowledge to banging a man who was almost six feet tall, but they'd managed it on more than one occasion.  Somehow they managed to fit both of their sturdy bodies with room enough to get the appropriate leverage, though Dean had never been entirely convinced that Cas didn't somehow alter the reality of the back seat; the Impala seemed far too heterosexual to accommodate that sort of thing.  It did make Baby's shocks creak and the car rocked like something out of a low-end porno, but there was nothing like the sound of the angel moaning in the back seat while Dean fucked him senseless.

Dean kisses Cas's neck and bare shoulders, biting occasionally, hard enough to leave welts and bruises that would fade within moments.  Cas reaches down between them to free Dean's cock from the confines of his boxers, then strokes it several times solo before pulling it up against his own.  The hunter groans at the sensation of his hot skin against Cas's still-cooler body, grinding his prick eagerly against the angel's. The movement is messy and imprecise, punctuated occasionally with the rub of denim or a toothy scratch of Dean's zipper.  Cas is already moaning, his breath warm on Dean's neck; he thinks for a moment that it would almost be enough just to grind one out like this, but the angel under him is warm and pliant and he can think of nothing more appealing than just slipping into him and riding him into the glossy seats.

He reaches down and fumbles under the seat, knowing that there's a bottle of lube and a pack of condoms.  It's been ages since he's done anything other than bareback his lover, but over the years there's been a fair number of quickies with good-looking girls and it was best to be prepared.  

He flips the cap open one-handed and slicks his fingers as he slides his tongue against Castiel's.  The angel nips at his lower lip impatiently, murmuring his name in the way that only he can.

"Want you," Dean breathes, rubbing his slippery fingers against the taut little hole, liking how his lover's muscles tightened at his touch.  Feeling the strength of his limbs and the grip of his body always made Dean a bit heady when he thought ahead to how it was going to feel, all slick and tight and just a bit too hot around his cock. Cas arches up against him, pressing his chest firmly against his with a soft cry when Dean eases his first finger into him.  It's followed almost immediately by his middle finger, which he twists slightly as he withdraws and thrusts again slowly.  

Cas reaches down between them to grip their pricks in a firm hand and stroke them together as Dean deliberately, deeply fingers him.  He can feel his mortal body accepting and opening up for him; as it does, Dean quickens his pace, thrusting his hips to push his cock more firmly into Castiel's palm.

He remembers with a pleasurable, belly-tightening twinge a handful of times when Dean had just pushed into him, slicked but unprepared.  The stretch and burn were maddening, slightly uncomfortable, but the need and the heat between them had been consuming. The pace and the intensity, rough and needy, had brought him up quickly and sent him crashing down again, shouting Dean's name into the palm of his lover's hand as he tried to quiet him, moaning "Shh, Shh.  S'okay, I got you..." into his ear.

This isn't like that, though the heat and the sudden fever-like need reminds him of other times when Dean had desperately taken him.  He grips a handful of his short hair and pulls his head back to expose his throat to his heated, sucking kisses.

"Fuck," Dean breathes, his face flushed and his body burning with heat.  He asks with breathless impatience, "You ready?"

Cas nods fervently, "Yes, yes.  Come on, Dean."

He withdraws his fingers and quickly drags his slippery hand over his cock.  As keyed up as he is, his pulse hammering in his ears, even that feels fantastic.  He wastes no time in butting the thick, wet head of his prick up between his cheeks, then nudging forward to sink the tip into the tight, ready heat of his body.  The angel moans as his body accepts the heavy, solid girth of Dean's cock.  He tilts his head back, focusing the whole of his angelic attention on the perceptions of his vessel, memorizing the heat and stretch and the maddening sensation of fullness.

Dean catches his jaw, his fingers still sticky with the lubricant, and pulls him into a demanding kiss that leaves them both breathless, lips flushed and swollen.  He thrusts his hips in the sharp, staccato rhythm that he knows Cas likes best, worming a hand between their bodies to grasp and stroke his prick.

Castiel moans into his ear, panting even though he doesn't, strictly speaking, need air at all.  

"Dean..."

Dean doesn't know why, but he's always liked when the angel moans his name.  Dirty talk was great from girls, telling him it was so good or that they wanted it just right like that, but there's something perfect about the succinct breath of his name, as though that said everything.  

"You're good, okay," Dean murmurs, his hips pistoning against his and his thighs knocking against his backside with an obscene slap.  It has reached the point of being loud sex; the wet, rough movements themselves and their own grating moans were probably audible half-way across the parking lot. Dean doesn't really care though; with the car rocking and rolling and the windows long since steamed over, there was no way anyone could have any misconceptions about what was going on..  

"Oh..." Castiel groans, following it with something eloquently obscene in Enochian.  He gasps, and then bites down on his lower lip to stifle an embarrassingly loud moan.

Dean laughs breathlessly, coaxing him softly, "C'mon, I like you loud..."

Cas almost glares at him, then moans into his mouth when Dean kisses him.  He's close, riding the wire, and he knows that Dean is toying with him.  He makes a sound of annoyance against his mouth, tugging Deans hair and earning an aroused groan of pleasure from him.

All at once, he lets go of his control and lets the pleasure overtake him; he fumbles to cover Dean's eyes as he comes hard into Dean's hand, pulling away from the kiss to shout wordlessly as he a flash of brilliant seraphic white passes rapidly over his pale skin.  His rapture floods Dean, burning pleasurably through him and pushing him well past his own limits, wrenching a helpless, almost painful moan from his throat as he spills himself into his lover's body.  His hips jerk spastically several times, his cock sliding deeply into him with the ease of the sudden lubrication.

He slumps against him, breathing hard.  Cas has always glowed when he came, but the intensity had spiked after his upgrade to archangel.  Lying there, completely spent and buried in his lover, he wonders if the shared euphoria would one day just stop his heart, or if the angelic laser light show would leave him blind.  Helluva way to go, as far as he was concerned.

Castiel uncovers his eyes and threads his fingers into Dean's hair, lazily nosing him into a kiss.

"Damn," Dean finally breathes, raising himself up on his arms and sliding out of Castiel with a raw moan.  

"Nn," the angel protests softly, feeling a trickle of come between his thighs as Dean pulls out.  He takes a breath and releases it as a long, shuddering sigh.

"Good?" Dean asks, though he knows the answer.

Cas hums in agreement.  He shifts to hold Dean close, not feeling even slightly guilty for the sticky smear that transfers itself from his stomach to the front of Dean's undershirt.

Dean, however, is acutely aware of how sticky and disgusting they both are.  His fingers are covered with Castiel's slippery spunk, and he knows that Cas is full of him.  With a little smirk, he slides a hand between Castiel's thighs and presses two come-slicked fingers into him, earning a throaty cry of surprise from the angel.

"Like that?" Dean asks as he fingers him slowly, his lover's body still surprisingly tight and wanting.

He kisses him tiredly by way of response, moaning against his mouth.  Dean can feel that he's tired, having experienced at least some of that release on an angelic level, and sensitive, though he knows he could easily make Mr. No Refractory Period come again easily.  He angles his fingers, curling him upward to rub tight little circles against his prostate, making the angel moan and jerk his hips.

After a moment, he withdraws his fingers and places a tender kiss on his forehead.

"Well, that's enough of that," he tells him tiredly,  grinning, "We're in public, I mean come on.  How many times you expect me to get you off?"

Cas makes an indistinct sound of amusement that could have been something in Enochian, then makes a vague gesture with his left hand that leaves them both clean and dry.

Dean is surprised by how much better he feels.  At the moment, Hell feels a long way away; he still has questions and concerns, as well as unerasable images, but the warm glow of his angel's light has managed to burn off some of the lingering gloom.  He won't admit it, but he also feels a warmth in the pit of his belly that he knows is love.  He loves Cas, and he is in love with Cas. And even though the angel is obviously getting the short end of the stick, the feather-brained idiot is stupid enough to love him back.  

"We should get back," Castiel tells him lazily, sitting up and shamelessly stealing a kiss.  Not satisfied with that, he takes another and another, kissing Dean till he's breathless and considering a second go.

"Jesus, you are full of mixed messages," he gasps, pulling the naked angel close again and just holding him there for a moment.  

Castiel smiles, one of his rare smiles that shows just a little bit of teeth, and presses himself against him, molding their bodies together comfortably.  He's wide awake - recovered already - but he knows that Dean is drowsy.

"If we head back now, you can rest until it's time to hunt," he points out.

"You really think you wore me out?" Dean demands, putting on a good show of manly bravado.  The truth is that their backseat spectacular has left him winded and weak-kneed, but he can't admit that.  In fact, he realizes he probably owes Sam major kudos for insisting that he take the afternoon off with Cas.

"Yes," Castiel replies readily, "And if not, I intend to make use of the drive to the motel to ensure that you are."

Dean doesn't think that he can handle Cas's very thorough road head after all that.  He groans, "Goddammit Cas, you're somethin' else."

He doesn't immediately let him go, though.  Sex has thrown off the chill that had lingered on the angel's skin, leaving him overwarm and smelling of salt and lightning.  It was exactly how Dean liked him best: soft-bodied, comfortably limp, and scented like a summer storm.  Dean holds him tightly for a moment longer, carefully memorizing the details of that instant.  

The words I love you are balanced on his tongue, but he swallows them down without thinking.  

"Yeah, okay, let's go.  But keep your tongue to yourself, you hear?  Last thing I need is to get pulled over with my cock in your mouth."

It's so much coarser than the terms of endearment filling his heart, but he still can't express them.  He never can.  What the angel gets instead, every time, is rough and tumble physical affection and a few muttered off-the cuff compliments.  

Castiel understands that. He kisses him quickly, loving him fiercely but not saying so aloud.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam is graciously unsmug when they return, even when Dean crashes on the motel sofa to nap.  He can tell that he had a satisfying afternoon by the easy sway of his brother's gait, but he neither wants to gloat nor even think about the details.  In his mind, all that Dean's good mood means is that he's avoiding the back seat of the Impala for awhile.

Castiel stays around to keep him company for awhile as he continues to research possible Leviathan-related incidents, but eventually pops off on what the hunter can only assume are holy errands of the heavenly host.  A sacred grocery run or something.

He texts casually with Gadreel and finds himself surprisingly jealous when he learns that Allison has been trailing after his lover like a duckling.  He's still slightly oversensitized from the almost-breakup in Oklahoma two days before, and still highly aware that Gadreel is rather natural with women.  However, he also knows that the former angel is oblivious to flirting from anyone other than himself.  That, coupled with several transparently impatient questions about how long they'd be gone, makes it easy to relax.

Dean wakes up groggy but in good spirits - Sam is reasonably certain that it stems from being touched by an angel, but again avoids thinking of it beyond the obvious joke.  Dean avoids any romantic talk, as well as any Hell talk, and instead relates to Sam how readily their personal archangel had tossed himself into the freezing waves.  He skimps a little on the details of how stunning Cas had looked with his tight, sharp-lined black wings soaked with water and ice in his hair and eyelashes, focusing instead on how weird and inhuman it all was.

While it's an interesting visual, Sam finds himself thinking about Gadreel's lost wings, and how their shifting greens had looked heavy with salt water.  He remembers when they were his wings, when he was Gadreel's vessel.  He remembers being by the water several times, and Gadreel explaining to him that even the biggest angels could stretch their wings full-width at the ocean bottom.  Gadreel, still healing, had soaked himself and let the purifying salt waters leech out the lingering pain.

"Sammy, you there?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry," he replies, shaking his head to clear his thoughts.  He struggles to backtrack into what Dean had said so that he could find an appropriate response, "So, ah, it was good?  It was a good time?"

Dean manfully avoids getting red in the cheeks, knowing that Sam pretty much knew he'd gotten laid.  With a dude.

"Yeah, I guess it was cool.  Feel like we don't get to the coasts too often.  Some reason monsters like the heartlands."

Sam nods, smiling.  His brother thought he was so smooth.

"Yeah, guess so."

"You, ah, talked to Charlie?"

Sam nods, "Yeah, got a couple isolated incidents that could be Leviathan, but looks like there've been hunters around shortly after.  I think this is the only active problem right now."

"Well, that's something I guess.  How's Stockholm?"

"S'good," Sam replies, surprised that he'd asked, "Sounds like that girl we brought home's been following him around."

"Huh," Dean comments as he walks to the bathroom to drag a comb through his mussed hair.  It breaks up the hold of the hair gel, which lets him restyle it with a bit of water, "Bet he loves that."

"He's a nice guy," Sam calls back to him, making a face, "Doesn't seem to mind."

"Well, no one really minds when a cute college coed's interested, am I right?" Dean chuckles obscenely, popping his head out of the bathroom and grinning at him irritatingly.

Sam rolls his eyes.  _Yeah Dean, you're totally a womanizing stud, I got it.  You totally weren't banging Cas all afternoon._

"I think he's oblivious, actually," Sam laughs, shaking his head, "I don't think he gets that he's a pretty good looking guy and people are gonna be into him."

"That's prolly a good thing," his brother muses, favoring him with a crooked smile,  "This way you have his oblivious angelic ass all to yourself."

The younger Winchester snorts, getting to his feet.  Well, if Dean is going to tease him, he'll tease him back, "Seems like your trip to the beach really wore you out."

Dean's grin falters, then is replaced by one of his embarrassed, boyish smiles as his cheeks glow red.  He can feel the back of his neck warming, "Shut up, Sammy."

Looking for a distraction, he casts about for his duffle bag.  He assumes they'll head straight out after they dispatch the Leviathan, probably with a head in the lockbox in the trunk.  

"Where the hell did he get off to anyway?"

"Said he had something to take care of, I guess," Sam replies, tucking his dirty clothes into a plastic grocery bag, then tucking that into the corner of his overnight bag.  He and Dean are well-trained on keeping dirty separate from clean and exactly how many times something could be worn before it needed to be tossed in the wash; he knows that he could easily wear those clothes again, but he's gotten a bit spoiled from having a home base and a fastidiously tidy former angel to do laundry.

"Figures he'd take off when there's work to do," Dean grumbles.

Sam smirks, wondering if his brother just likes complaining or if this is his way of saying he wants their angel around.  He realizes it's probably a combination of both, though he doesn't comment on either possibility.  Instead he dutifully finishes packing up and helps his still-groggy sibling tidy up.

"It's just one Leviathan.  We can totally handle that," he points out, grinning challengingly.

"Well, yeah.  But still," Dean grumbles.

He's not looking forward to returning to the crime scene, especially without his winged security blanket.  He's hesitant to tell Sam the full version of what had happened earlier, but he's logical enough to know that seeing an ancient monster chowing down on a pile of courses could cause a relapse.  While a single chomper isn't anything they can't handle, it would probably be considerably more complex if he suddenly hits the ground twitching with his eyes rolled back.

He clears his throat.

"So, ah... It's... Pretty nasty in there.  Where we're heading, I mean," he begins awkwardly.

"Yeah Dean, I know.  So far forensics say there's like 40 bodies in there," Sam replies.  He has the general realization that Dean is getting to a bigger, more awkward point and looks up at him expectantly.

"Yeah, so, ah... it really kinda freaked me out earlier.  In a weird... different kinda way."

"Okay..." his brother says patiently, inviting him to continue.  Seeing he was struggling, he prompts, "What kind of weird?"

"Like... like Hell weird," Dean finishes lamely.

"Oh," Sam replies, the earlier events of the day snapping into a different sort of clarity in light of that revelation.  Castiel's sudden presence and protective hover make a lot more sense when he realizes that Dean had most likely called him, and his jittery mannerisms in the car are a lot more justifiable knowing that it wasn't just embarrassment over throwing up. He wishes that Dean would have owned up sooner, but recognizes that his telling him even now represents a huge step for him.

He knows better than to press for detail, so he just asks, "So what do you need from me when we go back in?"

Dean appreciates that his brother isn't trying to talk about feelings or get into his head.  The fact that he's staying focused on the job at hand makes Dean more willing to be open with him; it's taken years, but Sam has finally learned to handle Dean with the diplomacy and manly grace that it takes to make Dean comfortable.  It's not manipulation exactly, but it isn't as though Sam isn't making a conscious effort to get his brother mellow enough to confide in him.

He smiles slightly, "Ah, I dunno.  Just... I dunno. I dunno how I'm gonna react being back in there, y'know?  I don't want to, ah, be freaking out when there's monsters to kill."

"Y'want to stay outside and I'll handle it and just call you in if I need back up?" 

"Nah, I think I'm okay.  I'm in a pretty good headspace about it, so I think I can handle it.  And you'll be right there-" he cuts himself off, surprised to find himself admitting that he'd be reassured by his baby brother's presence.  

Looking over with a slightly guilty, startled expression, he's even more surprised to find that Sam seems pleased by his admission.

"Yeah, well," he blusters a little as he looks at his frankly enormous 'little brother,' "I suppose there's no shame in liking having sasquatch on my side."

Sam grins outright, "Yeah, I got you."

Dean huffs a little, shaking his head as he walks them to the door, “I’m freaking six feet tall - _over_ six feet - it’s not my fault you’re a goddamn giant.  Can’t even imagine how Cas feels.  You know, asshole’s like 5’11” and you make him look practically friggin’ pocketsize.”

“Yeah, but I’ve heard his true form’s way bigger,” his brother laughs, grabbing his own bag and following him out into the lot.  

“Yeah, like a skyscraper or something.  Supposedly.  He could be lying, we’d never know.”

"Bet he's tiny."

They toss their bags into the trunk, both chortling a little at the angel’s expense.  They’re in surprisingly good spirits, despite that Dean has essentially admitted that he is suffering from his hell-related PTSD.  There is a comfortable openness that is still new to them, new since Sam completed the trials to close Hell, and neither has lost the pleasure of the novelty.  They can finally almost communicate like adults.

In the front seat of the car, Sam checks his phone and maps the drive to the crime scene out of habit; it's not necessary, as it’s not far and Dean’s photographic memory ensures that he will know the exact twists and turns of the local roads to take them safely to their destination.  Even so, there are a lot of things that they do out of habit, routine, or tradition.

“It’s cool you told me,” Sam says casually, “I mean, I appreciate it.  Sucks that it’s cropping up now, but I know you can work through it.  Walk it off, right?”

Dean laughs - “walk it off” had become a joke between the brothers after John had told a fourteen year old Dean to walk off what he’d thought was just a thump to the back that turned out to be two cracked ribs.  For some reason, the two had thought it was really funny and for awhile it became the answer to everything from hunger to boredom to needing stitches.  Their father pretended that it didn’t annoy him, but he had never been too good about jokes at his expense.  

Grimacing at the chill of the seat, he starts the car.  Its too damn cold, and Baby doesn’t feel like starting up on the first go despite that Dean just drove over a hundred miles a few hours ago.  She makes a wheezy little choke of annoyance before shuddering to life beneath them, and Dean pats the steering wheel placatingly but keeps his myriad complaints about the bitter cold to himself.

“Yeah, yeah.  It’s nothing, really.  We got it.  Just… I dunno.  If I seem to be going weird, just yell at me or something to snap me out of it.  I dunno.  I mean… you… get the flashback thing, I guess.  You had them pretty bad for awhile.”

“Yep,” Sam replies, deliberately not focusing on what those flashbacks had been.  Castiel may have taken the memories of Hell themselves, but there were echoes still lingering in his mind in the form of memories of reacting to memories.  He doesn’t remember what happened to him at Lucifer’s hand in the pit, but he knows that it was enough that he almost died from just remembering it.  

“So just… I dunno.  Keep me sharp,” Dean tells him.

It’s dark enough that the brothers can expect that the bulk of the crew have left the site.  There will, of course, be policemen patrolling the grounds.  However, according to the local department’s notes, they were no longer going to be running 24 hour forensic work; time is still of massive importance, but they have passed one of the critical timestamps that would allow for the most accurate analysis.  

They don’t really have a set plan, just badges that would allow them access to site and an assortment of concealed weapons.  It’s not like they normally sit down and diagram their plays, though, and both feel reasonably certain that the job will be finished within a few hours.  Most of those hours would likely be spent waiting, a prospect that never appeals to either of them; there is nothing fun, exciting, or enjoyable about crouching in the shadows and jumping at noises.

“Think we should call Cas?” Sam asks as they pull up.

“Nah.  If he’s not here, I’m sure he’s got a reason.  S’not like he doesn’t know what we’re up to.”

The other hunter nods and pulls an extra clip out of the glove box.  Shooting Leviathan doesn’t do too much, but something about being well-armed in the traditional sense makes him feel more secure lately.  With the clip tucked into one of the many pockets of his heavy coat, he climbs out of the car and walks up to the perimeter guard with his brother.  He hates seeing his breath visible as white swirls in on chill night air and can't wait to get back to the warmer southern states.  

The guard remembers them from earlier that day (his observation of ‘Hey, you’re the FBI kid who tossed his cookies!’ pricks Dean’s pride on multiple levels) and they access the quiet street easily.  In the distance, they can see the lights of a small village of reporters reflecting off of the low clouds at the north perimeter.  Even knowing that there are homes and businesses within blocks and a herd of paparazzi camped out just as close as they can get, they still manage to feel surprisingly small and isolated as they make their way up the street.

All of the affected venues have thick, translucent plastic sheeting draped in the front windows to obscure the inside view to anyone who might manage to sneak on-site.  To negate any creeping convenience that might be provided by the hazy veil of plastic, bright lights are positioned inside that would make any movement or change in shadows immediately visible to the patrolling guards.  So far, there have been a few college kids and conspiracy theorists who have tried to steal in to try to create photo exposés for the internet, but the graphic horror of the site has been enough to keep most looky-loos at a healthy distance.  

The brothers pause in front of the row of shops.  It looks like they are down to three active sites; the others have been cleaned out and locked down tight.  

“I think…” Dean begins in a low murmur, pausing for a moment as he considers the daylight-bright windows before them, “I think that it’s gonna be the diner.  I think it’ll go back to finish up that tech before anything else.”

“That one’s got the most windows, though.  It’s most likely to be seen,” Sam points out, jerking his chin toward the computer repair office, “Fewest windows, furthest off.”

“We could split up,” Dean suggests, “See if we can rustle up Feathers to see if he could keep an eye on the last one.”

His brother considers it - really considers it - then shakes his head.  He isn’t willing to leave his brother alone, crouching for possibly hours in a setting straight out of his recollections of Hell, when he’s already been compromised once that day.  At best, he could flip out and ruin the hunt; at worst, he could retreat into his head and get eaten alive.  Neither is in any way appealing, and Sam can’t verbalize either of these scenarios to his bull-headed, proud sibling without Dean absolutely insisting that they split up.

“Nah, y’know, I’ll bet you’re right.  Let’s just stake out the diner; I mean, Leviathan don’t even like dead meat.  This thing is gonna go to finish up what he started last night,” he says smoothly.

Dean looks at him suspiciously for a moment, then nods.  He isn’t going to question Sam’s agreement, not now when they have work to do and Sam is at least pretending to be on-board with his suggestion.  Real agreement doesn’t always matter, he’s found, what matters in a fight is fighting together.  

“All right then,” he replies, nodding and walking slowly, carefully to the diner door.  

It’s easy enough to get in.  Behind him, Dean hears Sam take a short, sharp breath through his nose at the sight of the carnage.

“Breathe through your mouth, Sammy,” Dean instructs gruffly, glancing around without letting his eyes linger too long on anything.  He can see what forensics removed that day and is impressed by their progress; almost half of the room has been cleared out, leaving only a few booths to finish the next morning.

Sam has gone a step further and has clamped his hand over his mouth and nose.  His eyes are wide and his face has gone a sickly white.  He wonders if it was hubris to think that he was the one protecting his older sibling; watching Dean and the confidence in his movements even as he obviously fights back nausea makes Sam wonder what sort of thing could have actually broken his brother, and what memories could be horrible enough to have made him run.

“We can watch from the kitchen,” Dean tells him, carefully walking the marked path until he is forced to step over the divider to cross behind the counter.  

His brother nods quickly and reaches over to catch on to Dean’s shoulder.  The elder Winchester notices that he’s shaking and unsteady, and stretches back to help keep him on his feet as he follows.  He feels a strange, pitying pride and an almost strength as he guides his partner into the kitchen.

The kitchen has already been cleaned; likely, the crew started there because there would have been comparatively few corpses.  In any case, the room is clean and bright and smells strongly of disinfectant.  The air is chill, like in the main part of the restaurant, and Dean imagines that he can almost see his breath.

“You okay?” he whispers as he moves to the service window between the kitchen and restaurant.  

Sam nods, though it’s a few seconds longer before he pulls his hand away from his mouth.  In this lighting, Dean observes that he is actually slightly green and his lips are a sickly, powdery pale.  He claps him on the shoulder bracingly and reaffirms, “Yeah, you’re okay.”

 _Glad you think so,_ Sam thinks drily, despite that he is reassured by Dean's blunt statement.  When Dean said that he was all right, he generally took it for granted that he was; his elder brother was so wildly overprotective that his stamp of “okay” generally meant things were considerably better than okay.  Unless it was an emotional thing, in which case “You’re okay” just meant that Dean didn’t know how to deal with it.  

Sam sighs quietly and moves to the door, pulling the spray bottle out of his bag and giving the handle an experimental pump.  With a pleasant little whine and puff, it dispenses a cloud of cleaning solution.  Sam twists the nozzle to tighten the stream - what were they going to do, gently mist it? - and squeezes again.  This time it releases a thick, focused stream of liquid and the hunter nods in satisfaction.

Dean positions himself carefully so that he can see out the service window into the diner.  There are a few plates of food still sitting on the windowsill, never to be picked up by a perky waitress whose entrails were probably staining the linoleum.  The cold of the room has left the food stiff and dry, but unspoiled.  The idea of it turns Dean’s stomach more than the reality, but it’s easy enough to ignore.  Meantime, the height of the long, skinny window has effectively limited his view downward, so the only unpleasantness in his line of vision is one booth full of a dead pair of college kids.

The two wait, watching.  Sam has his eye on the back doorway to the alley, though he doesn’t expect anyone to enter there, and Dean watches the front door through the window.  It’s still and quiet, tense but strangely companionable.  They’ve done this before - plenty of hunts required camping out.  Not everything just came right on cue - there were always nights or days where all they could do was wait.

His mind flicks to his earlier recollection of waiting in Hell, and he forcibly pulls himself back to the present.  He is determined not to get sidetracked just because he has a lot of time and nothing with which to occupy it, and the smell of bleach in the kitchen isn’t entirely covering the smell of decay from the diner.

God, he just wants to finish this and get the hell out of Milford.  He wants to be in the kitchen of the bunker, making a late-evening snack with his stupid angel asking stupid questions about Pop Tarts or something, and his brother and his stupid not-angel being stupid and lovey like they did sometimes.  It turned his stomach - like seriously, men _do not_ act like that - but it was a good kind of stomach turning.  Like watching a little kid do something embarrassing but cute, or getting pulled into something goofily romantic.

Not that he’s a romantic.  No, he doesn’t do that shit.  It always makes him feel stupid.  Like sure, sometimes he’d try something out for Lisa, like flowers or some kind of doofy little chocolates or teddy bear thing, but he always felt stupid.  He’d liked how she liked it, and how she lit up when she said that she liked that he’d had to plan ahead, so she knew he was thinking of her even when she wasn’t right in front of him.  He’d liked making her happy, and he’d liked that he had the _ability_ to make someone happy at all.  And Lisa had been good to him, had held him a lot of nights when he hadn’t felt like talking.  She put up with him drinking when he couldn't handle what had happened, couldn't handle not fitting into this new life.  He tried to fit, tried to have a normal job and make friends like a real person.  Tried to be a good person.  She had been a good person.  A good girlfriend.  Maybe he’d have married her, been a real dad to Ben, if the situation had been different.  It was never her fault that she wasn’t Cas and she couldn’t do anything to pull his brother out of Hell.  He’d always tried to make her believe she was enough for him.

 _Jesus, why the fuck am I am thinking about this?_ he wonders, exhaling slowly.  He has no desire to think about unhappy things; he doesn’t want to think at all, but there’s nothing else to do but watch.  It’s one of the joys of silence.

It’s better than thinking about Hell, though.  He glances over at Sam, noting that his color has normalized and he seems more bored than anything; it’s very difficult to maintain a high level of focus for a long period of time.  It’s already been almost an hour, and they have each shifted about uncomfortably several times, flexed their hands, wrists, ankles, knees, to make sure that the blood was still flowing.  Pins and needles aren’t exactly ideal for chasing down something with a big old maw full of razor sharp teeth.

He sighs and rolls his shoulders, catching Sam’s eye and making a face.  _This isn’t what normal brothers do_ , he muses to himself as he turns his attention to the diner again.  The dead girl in the booth catches his eye again and he feels an unexpected roll of revulsion in his stomach.  It annoys him as much as anything; he thought he’d acclimated to her slack face already.

Something in it this time just touches off a memory.  It’s an incomplete one, not identical.  It’s Hell, middle days.  A girl told him that she heard there was a way out through Purgatory, and if they could just get there, they could find a way to pop back across to the land of the living.  She was unique among some of the other souls he’d spoken to there in that she actually looked dead.  Most of the other souls just seems like bloody, dirty humans.  But every moment that passed, this girl somehow seemed to look more dead, though she wasn’t decaying.  

He didn’t know why he believed her, except that he was desperate.  And knowing what he does now about how the realms connected, perhaps he wasn't wrong to believe. Somehow they broke away and made their way through the twisted, burning, stinking inferno.  They were cut, burned to the bone, bleeding and ragged as they crossed oceans of glass and fields of knives.  It was illogical, and more than once he remembered wondering what condition his body would be in if he could even get back to it, especially if his soul looked like this.  It was agony, but there was a glow of hope with the girl struggling along beside him.  There was a sort of needy camaraderie, and he almost felt like he was falling in love even though they didn’t actually like each other; it was like in action movies where the romantic leads bonded over survival and it was enough.

They managed to make it to where they needed to be, and when the door opened, it wasn’t Purgatory.  Somehow, Dean had always known that it wouldn’t be.  It was Alastair’s private dungeon, done up like a hunting lodge with a pleasant, roaring fire in the hearth that was all the more sinister for its domesticity.  _Look at you, precious darling, you found me._

He screamed and cried, even without Alastair touching him.  Because all roads led back in one big winding infinity loop, a figure eight with the rack at its heartless heart.  And he knew then that the pain would never stop, and that there would be a day when he would give in.

He swallows hard, trying to push that memory back.  He drags his eyes away from the diner and looks at Sam, trying to assure himself of the reality of him and their location on the surface of the Earth.  Even that isn’t completely convincing, because he had seen a host of synthetic Sams in Hell.  Once they’d told him Sam had sold his soul to join him, and that he would eventually break and it would be his job to torture his brother.  Another time Alistair had made himself look like Sam while he’d beaten the tar out of him.

 _But that’s really Sam_ , Dean tells himself firmly, _And if I say ‘Hey Sammy’, he’s gonna tell me to shut up so I don’t spook the damn monster._

 _And if I call for Cas, he’ll be here in a hot minute_ , he thinks, wetting his lips with his tongue.  He takes a deep breath and shoves down the nastiness of Hell.  _I can fucking do this._

He just wishes that the damned baddie would show up and get this party started.  

Even thinking that, he jumps when the door opens and one of the patrolmen walks in.  He waves a hand to get Sam’s attention, then jerks his chin toward the service window, mouthing the word “Incoming.”

“You boys in here?” he calls, picking his way through the marked path with way more familiarity than anyone should have.  Dean pulls his knife, though he always feels vaguely uncomfortable attacking something human shaped.  He is ready, though he knows that Sam is ready too - he’s not going to cut anyone’s head off until they make sure they know what’s what.

The man walks back into the kitchen, pushing the door cautiously open.  For his efforts, he's rewarded with a spritz of borax in the neck.

He makes a face, an angry one, but there is no screaming or smoking as he wipes at his skin with a gloved hand and demands, "What the hell are you two doing in here?"

Sighing internally, Dean grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him in to the overbright room.  He grumbles, "Keep it down."

"What're you doing?" the officer asks again, more confused now than anything else.  Most people react to authoritative grumbles with an intuitive sort of respect, and this man is no different.

"Somethin's been gettin' at the bodies. We wanna find out what," Dean says quietly, hoping that this guy will either shut up or just leave through the back door.  Already there's a good chance that the hunt's been blown.

"Like what, a wolf or something?  Didn't think that was FBI business."

"Yeah, well we're pretty hands on agents."

For the first time that hunt, they get the trademark skeptical look from law enforcement.  It's always a dangerous moment and it can go one of three ways: either this guy would clear his suspicions in his own head without saying anything, he'd try to arrest them, or it would become necessary to lay out the reality if what they were dealing with.

Looking at the patrolman's weathered, thin-featured face, Dean isn't sure which way it will go.  All the same, his hand subtly moves to his gun.  Unfortunately, that's a movement that most men in law enforcement take pretty seriously.  The other officer has his gun out immediately and trained on Dean.  Sighing in a grandeose way, the hunter lifts his hands to about shoulder height, palms forward.

 _Goddamn civilians,_ he thinks irritably.  Of course, his definition of a civilian was closest to "non-hunter" than any proper dictionary meaning.

"You really think you oughta be pulling a gun on an agent?" Dean asks, "'Specially since it ain't like I'm here alone."

He nods in Sam's direction, bringing the patrolman's attention to the fact that Sam has his own pistol trained on him.

"If we could all just calm down and put the toys away, that'd help everybody out," Dean continues smoothly.

"What the hell is going on here," he says, slowly lowering the barrel of his gun to a less lethal angle.

"Prolly ain't wolves," Dean says simply, looking back out through the service window.  There's no movement, "And you prolly don't really wanna be here when we find out what it is."

The cop misconstrues Dean's meaning, but it works in their favor; he takes it to mean that whoever killed all of these people would be back to check up on his handiwork.  This falls more in line with the kind of work he expects from the FBI, which puts him enough at ease that he holsters his gun completely.

"I wanna see the monster who did this," he replies, nodding resolutely.

 _No,_ Sam thinks as he tucks his own gun away, _I really, really don't think that you do._

He likewise hates when there are uninformed people involved in a hunt.  It turns a reasonably simple salt and burn or vampire decapitation into a real ordeal; normal people never know what to do in the face of the supernatural and their first instinct is almost always completely, dangerously, frustrating counterproductive.  However, there's little they can do if the man insists on staying.  Sam just nods and says lowly, beckoning him toward him with his hand,  "You help me cover the back door... Quietly."

The patrolman, whose surname is Green according to his badge, moves to crouch awkwardly beside Sam.  There, the two wait while Dean watches the front.

Sam feels vaguely hopeless as time passes; it isn't a foregone conclusion that the Leviathan would return at all, especially tonight, and with this commotion it seems as though its reappearance drops in likelihood with every passing second.  To his credit, Green hardly moves and doesn't complain, despite that it is late and he is no doubt as stiff, cold, and tired as they are.

Somewhere around 1 am, there is the soft jingling slide of a lock pick, followed by the barely audible shift of the front door opening.  Dean, who has been vacillating between stone-cold boredom and internalized anxiety attacks, perks up immediately at the prospect of movement.  He wants something external to fight, and heaven help whatever is coming through that door if it isn't human.

And the early signs seem promising.  A man dressed as a police officer threads his way through the carnage, looking thoughtfully at the remaining bodies until he finds what he's looking for.  He glances down at the bisected forensic tech, his snack from the evening ore, then up toward the service window.

"I know you're there," he says calmly.  

"That's Tony," Green says softly, huffing in annoyance.  

Sam shakes his head firmly, and the man insists, "He's one of my best guys, worked with him ten years.  Think I don't know what he sounds like?"

He starts toward the door and Sam grabs him, hissing lowly, "It's _not Tony_."

The local man's eyes widen in surprise at Sam's matter-of-fact insistence; his confusion overwhelms his skepticism for a moment, then he shakes his head.

"This bust isn't happening.  You needed to coordinate with the locals to keep from getting interrupted like this," he says before pulling away, pushing the door open, and walking out.

Dean grits his teeth and meets Sam's eyes, muttering, "Diversion?"

They hear the patrolman talking to his "friend" and grimace as their location is also betrayed.  

"Those two Fed fellows from earlier think something's going after the bodies.  We were just waiting it out.  They're in the kitchen."

"That so?"

They both move quickly to follow, uncomfortably putting themselves into the line of vision of the Leviathan.  

"Well looky there, hunters," it breathes, smiling as it eyes up Sam's water bottle, "And Winchesters to boot.  Now don't I feel special."

Their patrolman's calm expression falters for a moment; that isn't the right diction for his colleague, nor do the words that he's said make sense.  Hunters?  Winchesters? He is too confused to feel nervous, but the strange behavior does unsettle him.  He moves back very slightly without even realizing that he's doing it.

"Are you going to cut my head off right in front of my friend Jake here?" He continues, smiling.  The smile is just slightly too wide, though nothing inhuman.  

"What the hell are you talking about?" Officer Green asks, frowning.

Sam dislikes dealing with intelligent monsters.  Give him a mindless revenant or a pre-programmed ghost on infinite loop any day to an ancient, intelligent monster.  He is fairly certain that this is going to go poorly, because even the dumbest Leviathan has had a couple thousand years to come up with a few tricks to save its own skin.  

  
"Nothing, Jake.. Just wondering, what names did these two give you?" he smirks and pulls out his gun.

"Ah, Johnson and Young."

"AC/DC?  Really, boys?" the Leviathan says, pointing his gun squarely at Sam.  He knows them well enough to know that it will keep Dean at bay; there are certain facts that all Leviathan know about the Winchesters.  Their crushing codependency being Fact #1. "These are the Winchesters.  You remember them from a few years ago? The Winchesters, the two guys that did those nasty shoot-em-up robberies?"

Jake Green obviously does remember, "They got gunned down."

"Check the records, they've 'died' about a half dozen times.  I'll bet they know something about this whole business, the sick fucks."

Dean feels a slow, uncomfortable sinking in his stomach.  They now had an armed innocent being played against them, and more than that, if this guy truly believed the story he could get the real Feds on their asses again.  Some days it really just felt like they couldn't catch a break.

"This is bullshit," Dean says flatly, "Get your damn gun off my partner, you crazy douchebag."

"Look 'em up on your phone," the Leviathan tells the other officer, "Tons of pics online, I'm sure.  Not like you psychopaths avoided the cameras before when you were blowing people's brains out in diners like this."

Sam looks over at his brother briefly, trying to figure out the best way to get out of this situation.  With a gun trained on his heart and the other officer moments from finding their body doubles on Search the Web, the only real solution that suggests itself was wearing a trenchcoat and isn't always great at replying to him in a timely manner.

Dean, thinking the same thing, sends up a brief prayer to the absent angel.

Aloud, he says, "Just call my super in DC. He'll-"

"Who you got covering for Bobby Singer these days?" 'Tony' interrupts with a smirk.  Of course he knows - they all know.

"You sonuvabitch," Dean hisses.

It's Sam that moves, though.  Sam who has most recently seen the spirit of their paternal stand-in, Sam whose anger is sometimes just as close to the surface as his brother's.  He swings his fist upward, catching the leviathan's arm and deflecting the reflexive gunshot toward the ceiling.  He slams his elbow into his jaw, knocking him back though he knows it is doing little actual damage.

Dean lunges at the same time to disarm the human officer, then shoves him back to keep his own body between him and the monster.  It's not where Jake wants to be, though, and he is immediately on Dean with strength and skill that the hunter didn't expect in a man his age.

They all know that the gunshot will bring in reinforcements momentarily.  They all have different reactions to the the information; the Winchesters are acutely aware that if they don't dispatch the monster before backup arrives, there will be no opportunity to do so later; the seed planted in Green's mind is enough to get them detained, and fingerprinting would confirm that they are actually the Winchesters.  Explanations of body doubles never went well, even when one of the damn things  is right there in front of them.

The Leviathan knows it will have an easy escape if it can just stall.  Sam is fighting it, though, and he has managed to get his cold fingers to grip the water bottle again to squeeze the nozzle.  The borax hits it squarely, splattering and burning, hissing, up the side of his neck.  He bellows, gripping Sam’s shoulders and throwing him back.

The sound is not human, vibrating with a different sort of intensity that makes the other officer pause to stare at him.  He sees where the water has scarred and burned his colleague face almost cartoonishly, like acid in a superhero movie.  He knows that the same liquid had no effect on him, especially not burning through the skin to show the raw muscles underneath.  
As he watches, the holes knit themselves together, leaving his face smooth.

"What..." he breathes.

In that second's distraction, Dean pulls his gun and expertly shoots the Leviathan in the head, neatly missing his brother to catch the beast in the forehead.  He knows it won't kill it, will barely slow it down, but it's the half second that Sam needs to break away from its strong grip and put some distance between their bodies.  

The patrolman reflexively catches on to Dean and jerks the gun out of his hand.  With one smooth movement, he pistolwhips the hunter, dropping him unconscious amid the blood and gore on the floor.    He doesn't hear Tony's body fall, though, so he turns to see what happened.  Maybe he was wrong and the "agent " had missed.  He's stunned to see that he is not only still on his feet, but the blood on his forehead is an inky, oily black.  As he watches, the bullet hole shrinks and vanishes.

His thoughts are immediately on the T1000, which is the only image that even begins to take shape.  It's the wrong conclusion and he knows it, but he has the right reaction - he swears and jerks back, putting himself protectively between Dean's unconscious body and their obvious enemy.

"Tsk, Jake.  Sorry you had to see that... Now I guess I'm just going to have to kill you and make it look like they did i-"

He cuts off in confusion when a reddish light begins to glow in his chest.  It blazes brighter until it is a smoldering white that leeches up to his face and burns out his eyes. He crumples inward, leaving Castiel standing behind him with one hand raised.

The patrolman just stares.

"You..." he breathes, "Oh my _God_..."

He means the interjection incredibly literally; he is a good officer and an intelligent man, he keeps up on the news.  Looking at the dark haired man in the trenchcoat who just smote that creature out of existence, he immediately recalls when God walked the Earth a few years before. God with a straight back and a dirty coat.

He can't quite remember the name.  But Sam says it for him, entirely too casually.

"Cas, Dean's down.  Get him up and clean him off before he comes around."

They both know how bad it would be for Dean to wake up like that, surrounded by bodies and putrefaction with bits of horror smeared on his face and clothes.  That would likely lead to a dead-eyed, shaking episode and a week of hard drinking.  Cas moves immediately to Dean's side and lifts him easily into his arms, as though he was picking up a sleeping child rather than a solid-bodied man who is bigger than he is.

"You, you're God.  _Castiel_ ," Officer Green says in reverent shock, wanting to touch him but not daring.

Castiel's eyes are bright and inhuman when he looks at him, but there is a surprised note of sadness that is remarkably easy to read in his features, "I'm sorry, you were misled; I'm only an angel."

He takes a step and is out in the dark night behind the diner with Dean, leaving the two men to deal with the Leviathan.  Green is not ready for that, nor does his brain even begin to know where to process a God or an angel.  He reaches out a hand to rest his fingers against the solid, cold wall and steady himself; he isn't entirely sure that he can think and remain upright, but is coherent enough to know that he doesn't want to collapse into a booth with a slack-jawed corpse.

Sam is considerably less shaken; he wants to complete the job and get outside to check on Dean.  Obviously, Cas is going to ensure that he's all right, but he is still eager to be back in their safe little circle.   He pulls his long knife and carefully approaches the body, then methodically draws back his arm and cuts the head off in one smooth stroke.  The patrolman is too shell shocked by everything that has happened to react - he just stares, feeling a nauseated surge of horror rising hotly in his belly.

"Is it dead?" he finally manages.

"Hopefully.  If not, keeping the head and body separate should be enough," Sam says briskly, fighting back nausea himself.  This has been one of the most unpleasant hunts he's ever endured.

It's enough for Jake.  He nods and shakily pulls out his radio, "False alarm, sorry.  Got spooked and took a shot at nothing, all clear."

He clips the radio back on his belt and knows he has no real explanation for another decapitated body. 

"That thing do all this?" He asks quietly.

"What?" Sam asks, slightly dazed himself, "No, no.  That was a bottom feeder.  Something bigger did all this."

"Is it gonna come back?"

"I dunno," the hunter admits.  He isn't ready to deal with the traumatized law enforcement, not when he's unsteady on his own feet with Dean unconscious outside.  Still, he's not heartless, "But we're gonna take care of it, we're working it out, okay?"

Jake has a lot of questions.  He doesn't know how to ask or where to start, what words to use or whether any of this is even real.  The strange, dark "end of times" feelings he's been trying to shake for the last few years sudden crash down on him again.  He nods dumbly; there’s really only one question whose answer has any meaning for him.  He weighs wording and tries to determine if the younger man before him would even have any kind of credibility if he answered him at all.  He finally asks almost childishly, "Is everything gonna be okay?"

The question surprises Sam, though he doesn't know why.

He nods, “Yeah… yeah.  It will.  It always is, y’know?”

It’s weird to think how many apocalyptic situations they’d all stared down.  It’s given him the strangest outlook on life, this perception that nothing is insurmountable but something new is always coming.  It’s exhausting and affirming at the same time, sometimes more one than the other.  He wonders what it’s like to be just a normal person, one who sees strange, scary things and never knows how they’re resolved.  Or maybe even one who had no idea that there’s been any problems in the world over the last few years except a number of wars and a global recession.  He can’t imagine it.

The hunter reaches over to lightly clap the man on the shoulder, in a way that he hopes is reassuring rather than condescending, “This isn’t anything new.  We’ve got it.  Don’t worry.”

The patrolman nods, relaxing slightly.  He doesn’t necessarily believe it, but he needed to hear it.


	5. Chapter 5

Gadreel texts periodically all day, Allison notices.  He is remarkably polite about it - patiently setting the phone aside when she speaks to him - but she still can’t help but feel upstaged by Sam Winchester even though he is half-way across the country.  Gadreel is more interested in a message or photo from the hunter than he is with anything that she could say, even though she is sitting right in front of him.

The household is composed of mostly night owls.  As the evening progresses, the bunker’s inhabitants slowly trickle out to the large common room.  They don’t all talk all the time, but they share each others’ company even when they are reading or playing with electronics and hardly seeming to notice each other.  

Allison sits in curious contemplation of her place among them.  She knows their basic histories, having learned some surface-level timelines from Gadreel, but she has a hard time believing any of it.  Even after something as unbelievable as being possessed by an angel, it’s hard to believe that the skinny Asian kid is a prophet who was killed and resurrected and his mom (currently sleeping) spent months possessed by a demon.  It’s hard to believe that the dark haired woman who is pointedly not talking to the nerdy ginger is the Dorothy and the two just got back from Oz.  It’s hard to believe that the quiet, dark-haired foreigner was once the King of Hell.  

She knows that Gadreel has no reason to lie to her, but it still seems like an incredible set of people to have in one place.  Compared to outsmarting an archangel or ruling Hell, being an angel’s marionette seems almost ordinary.  She doesn’t _feel_ ordinary, but it is a slightly humbling experience.

They all watch the news together, chatting occasionally until the wee hours of the morning. There are nuances in their relationships that Allison can observe as an outsider without knowing the details - Kevin and his mother do not talk to Crowley, who seems to be on surprisingly warm terms with Gadreel.  Dorothy seems to be angry with Charlie, but her heart obviously isn’t in it because she keeps stealing glances to see if Charlie is looking over at her.  When Charlie doesn’t seem to be paying any particular attention to her, she sits closer to Kevin and seems to watch over him almost protectively.  She clearly doesn’t like Gadreel, though Gadreel seems to like everyone there and tries to subtly court their approval.

At around 2, Gadreel looks up from a text and announces, “They finished up in Milford and are heading home.  They will probably be back in a day and a half.”

He’s obviously happy about the news.  Charlie smiles at his enthusiasm and asks, “Was it just the one Leviathan?”

“Yes, just the one,” the former angel affirms before turning his attention back to the little glowing screen.

“What’s a Leviathan?” Allison asks, wanting to be a part of the conversation.

“Big, scary things!” Charlie says, leaning forward slightly in her divot in the couch cushion, “They’re shapeshifters who can turn into anybody, and they have these crazy giant mouths and like to eat people.”

Kevin glances over at Charlie, smirking slightly.  He’s finally normalized in the last week or so, but he still is having some problems processing all aspects of his time in the Garden.  He adds, “Dick Roman was a Leviathan.  You remember him on the news, really big like 2 years ago? There was like this whole huge program to make people into lunchmeat in a really… weirdly industrialized way.  It was seriously messed up.”

Allison is struck by how casual they are about this and how outside of the group she feels.  Things eating people still qualified as a Big Deal in her book. She wants them to like her though, even though she is going to call Arakiel when the Winchesters return.  She might break their hearts tomorrow, but tonight she wants to feel as though she belongs.  When she’s possessed by an angel again, she won’t care if they all hate her.  She tells herself that anyway.

“I thought they were there to go after Abaddon,” she comments.

Crowley looks up from his book.  He asks casually, “And how do you know about Abaddon?”

She realizes that her story didn’t include the demonic Knight of Hell.  She had explained the blood on her clothes and the deep chest wound by saying that Arakiel had attacked her then healed her to prove that he was an angel.  Having knowledge of the frankly terrifying redheaded demon, whose true face burns blearily on the fringes of her memory, is problematic.

“They said something about it before they left,” Allison manages smoothly, “Dean did.”

Crowley’s expression is difficult to read, but she catches a hint of skepticism that is reflected in his voice, “Good memory.”

“I read about her in Gadreel’s angelic lore book,” she adds, “She sounds terrifying.  Did they find her?”

Gadreel shakes his head, “No… she had moved on, unfortunately.  Or perhaps fortunately; from what Sam said earlier, her form is unstable, and there are times when her true face is visible.”

“That’s bad?” Allison asks curiously.  Playing up her ignorance, she asks, “What does she look like otherwise?”

“She should look like a pretty hot redheaded chick, sort of classic, like 50’s pinup sort of look.  That’s who she’s possessing, this girl from like, Sam n’ Dean’s grampa’s era, someone he knew actually,” Charlie supplies.

Crowley resumes for her, “Whereas her true form, her demonic face, is a great nasty thing with thirteen heads with quite a few teeth and eyes and horns.  Humans can’t look at it without going mad.  Seriously.  You can actually, literally, die of fear from looking at her.  Your heart will stop.”

He takes a sip of his scotch and continues, “Normally you wouldn’t see the real monster, just the meatsuit.  But Gaz and I did a little bit of something to her… trapped her in her body and then tried to exorcise her.  She couldn’t go to Hell because of the tether but couldn’t stay because of the rite, and she is not in very… stable state at present.  Not so friendly either.”

“Oh,” Allison replies.  She turns that over in her thoughts, wondering what that meant in the context of Arakiel and everything that was happening with the other angels and their battles. She had been interested in Arakiel.  She seemed to want him for something, but the memory is unclear. 

She wonders where Arakiel is and if he is safe.  She can’t help but think that he’s surprisingly vulnerable for something so old and powerful; thinking of Abaddon out to hunt him makes her feel an unexpected twinge of concern for the angel.  She isn’t sure what motivates the emotion, but the result is that she suddenly wants to be away from these people who don’t know him and don’t understand her.

“I think I’m going to turn in for the night,” she says, climbing to her feet.  “I s’pose I’ll head out tomorrow when Sam and Dean get back.  It seems kinda crappy to just leave without saying goodbye.

Gadreel knows that the Winchesters would likely be relieved if she was gone by the time they arrived, but he doesn’t say anything.  He knows better. Charlie has been working on “humanizing” his speech patterns and inflection; he has been working on his own to improve his tact and social grace.  He just nods, then says, “If you need anything, I’ll be right down the hall.”

She slips off after a few other quiet 'good nights' from the mismatched group.  The quiet of the bunker is entirely unlike the quiet of the dorms; it's both warmer and lonelier.  As she shuffles back to her room, she imagines she can feel the presence of the unusual intellectuals who had once lived here.  She wonders if they would judge her or encourage her, and she wonders why she cares what some dead ghost-loving frat boys would have thought.

Her room is comfortable and she is still exhausted as she recovers from the dregs of illness, but her mind is unwilling to release her to sleep.  She mulls over her complex feelings about Arakiel and weighs them against what she read about him that afternoon.

She feels as though she would know if he was a terrible creature.  She'd carried him around in her mind and allowed him to act through her limbs; after willingly giving up her own agency for him, it seems impossible that she wouldn't know the intentions of the animating force behind all of that power.

And yet, she realizes that she knows little of Arakiel's mind - he had taken full control of her, but had given her little in return.  She hardly remembers now what it felt like to be consumed by him.  The memory is like the memory of pain - she remembers that it happened, but she can’t recall the actual sensation.

She considers going down the hall to knock on Gadreel’s door.  Sam’s door, really.  She knows Gadreel is sleeping in his boyfriend’s bed while he’d away, probably because he misses him.  It’s sweet.  All girls want a guy like that.  She absently imagines playing at being the cute, frightened little coed who can’t sleep and just wants his company.  She could seduce him, she’s sure of it.  He’s surprisingly naive for all that muscle and brilliance.  She’s not really interested in sex, but it would let her sleep in his bed and curl close to him while she slept.  He has those strong arms that fit so well around girls her size.  It would feel safe, welcome, and about a thousand times less lonely than this guest room.  Just sleeping in a real room, one that belonged to someone, would feel less lonely.  It isn’t like he wouldn’t like it - she’s positive that she could get him off,, and the idea of being a nasty little homewrecker seems unusually exciting.  

She isn’t a homewrecker, though, nor is she the type to pressure or confuse anyone into sex.  Especially not someone who has only shown her kindness; it’s bad enough that her own angel will probably kill Gadreel’s lover tomorrow if given the opportunity.  It upsets her if she allows herself to think about it.  She knows the reasoning behind it and that it is motivated by need rather than sport, but she still doesn’t like to think about how it will devastate the blond ex-angel.  She doesn’t move, just stays curled tightly along one side of her mattress until she falls into an uneasy sleep.

By the time she wakes up, its almost noon.  Her limbs feel heavy, but her head is clear and her muscles no longer have a fever-weak ache.  She feels distantly sad and quietly lonely as she dresses in her borrowed clothes, but also excited at the prospect of being reunited with her angel.

The morning gives her a different clarity on that subject - she feels that she knows him and can trust him.  He, like Gadreel, is simply misunderstood and acted rashly out of love.  For that mistake he has already forfeited a favored place among the angels and has endured a million years of punishment.  In her mind, his story and motivations are remarkably human and relatable.

The Impala rattles up into the driveway at around midnight.  The snow is half-melted in the diffuse light from the porch and the sky is a clear, star-flecked blue that is sharpened by the cold.

At the steering wheel, Dean looks worn.  Sam drove the first leg of the cross-country trip while his brother dozed uncomfortably in the back with his lover, but they traded off at noon and Dean has been driving for twelve hours.  Both men are tired and unusually haunted by what they have seen; neither looks forward to relating the story to the rest of their extended hunting party.

Gadreel isn't subtle as he walks down to the car to meet his most beloved.  Holding his duffle bag in one hand, Sam leans in to give him a one-armed hug.  Not satisfied with the greeting, the blond slips both arms around his waist and pulls him close to kiss him.  For a moment Sam seems surprised, but he smiles against Gadreel's mouth, drops his bag, and tugs him flush against his chest to kiss him properly.

Holding him, Sam is struck by how much better he feels when Gadreel is close to him.  Gadreel is struck by how cold he is.  The former angel thoughtlessly walked outside without a coat, and by the time Sam pulls back to kiss his forehead, he has decided that he has had enough of the wintery outdoors.

On the front step, the kiss makes Allison hesitate.  

Beside the car, the kiss makes Castiel feel his usual twinge of jealousy at their comfort and closeness, but it's duller than usual.  He smiles slightly at his own grouchy, constantly posturing Winchester and briefly, discreetly, touches his forearm as he pulls a bag of depleted supplies out if the trunk. 

Dean glances over at him and smiles quickly, just as discreetly touching his hand.  Castiel is satisfied with that, knowing that it means the same thing.

He looks past his lover to Allison's fresh, unfamiliar face.  

"Who is that girl?" he asks quickly, his voice sharper than he had intended.

"Told you about her.  That's, ah, Allison or something.  She's the one we picked up in Oklahoma," Dean replies, glancing at the girl reflexively and then turning a slightly confused look on Castiel, "Why?  You got the hots for her or s-"

"You need her out of here, far away from here," he tells Dean emphatically.

"Yeah, first bus out to Massachusetts-"

"No, I mean now.  She is Arakiel's vessel."

Dean straightens, looking at Allison again as though he'd be able to see whatever was putting their seraphic watchdog on edge, "What?  No way.  His vessel's some big black dude."

"Dean, this is very serious," Cas tells him, "If she calls him he'll know exactly-"

He hears Arakiel's wings before he sees him.  When the ancient angel touches down, the pressure seems to subtly shift as though a sudden storm has gathered on the periphery.

Castiel turns to face him, placing himself between the newcomer and the Winchesters.  Unseen, his four broad wings flare out as a protective barrier.

Arakiel tilts his head to the side, regarding him curiously.  As he did with Malachi's soldiers, he speaks authoritative Enochian, though addressing an archangel in that manner is highly disrespectful. 

"You're an archangel, but I do not know you."

What he doesn't say aloud is that Castiel is the smallest archangel he's ever seen.  He can feel the strength radiating off of him and he can see the light of heaven reflecting off of his feathers, but he recognizes that he has the build of a simple soldier and he doesn't respect him.

"I know all of the archangels," he says, his own broad violet wings fanning out in a dominance display, invisible to their human observers.

The words and the gesture prick Castiel's pride and he postures as well, lifting his wings and spreading the longest feathers wide and puffing up the shorter, softer feathers aggressively.

"I am Castiel, and my grace was augmented by God," he says archly, adopting an exalted form of their language reserved for archangels.

Gadreel can't see the nuanced power displays between the two powerful angels as they communicate, but he is aware that they are happening.  He can understand only the barest impression of their words, but he is relieved not to have entirely lost his linguistic comprehension.  He remembers Arakiel and the sheer size and power of him, the incredible beauty of his wings and his smoldering eyes, and he contrasts it against what he knows of Castiel.  As an angel, he has only seen him sick on stolen grace, and then possessed by God.  He has never seen him as an archangel, but he knows intuitively that his natural form is largely unchanged - Castiel is a slim, quick fighter with a body built for agility and a mind built for strategy.  A quick, sharp angel versus a powerful, enduring warrior.

He carefully turns his body to subtly shield Sam.  He would be only a small deterrent to Arakiel's attack, but it is all that he can offer.

Arakiel notices the moment and his eyes flick over for just a moment before he looks back to Castiel.  In his mind, Gadreel winces at the sharpness of the angel's voice, _I will kill you too, sweet young soul, if you place yourself in my path._

When they met before, Arakiel commented that his soul was younger than his body; he did not recognize him.  Gadreel doesn't know how to speak without speaking anymore, so he thinks at him very hard, _I am Gadreel_.

At that, Arakiel looks at him intently, momentarily dismissing Castiel by turning his attention away from him to scrutinize the sturdy blond human.

Castiel snarls, and on another plane it resonates as a roar, "Do not disrespect me.  State your intentions."

Arakiel looks back to him, smirking.

"I am here on Bartholomew's orders to kill Sam and Dean Winchester."

Castiel's sword is in his hand, but his brows are drawn in confusion; the angelic skirmishes happening on earth did not involve the Winchesters.  Even if they did, Bartholomew knows him and knows of his fierce devotion to the Wtwo brothers; he wouldn’t have dared to attack the Winchesters.  Arakiel could badly wound him, certainly slow him down and cause him an unimaginable amount of pain, but a mere angel sword couldn't penetrate an archangel's grace.  As Castiel's transformation was common knowledge among the heavenly host, he couldn't understand the strategy of Bartholomew's attack; if he succeeded, Castiel would not only kill Arakiel, but he would likely slay the entirity of Bartholomew's resistance.

"Then Bartholomew must want you dead.  The Winchesters are under my protection and I will kill you before I allow harm to come to them."

Arakiel is an intelligent angel, but not a strategist.  Even so, the knowledge that his intended targets are guarded by a fearsome, if tiny, archangel resonates.  He lets his wings relax several degrees in a considering way, indicating to Castiel that he was momentarily standing down.

Aloud, he says, "I was not given this information; it significantly alters my position."

Castiel doesn't change his offensive posture, though he allows a brief, dip in the tips of his splayed feathers to communicate that he would not attack without further provocation.

To the humans watching, it seems a rather anticlimactic discussion.

"I'm afraid that you have been misled," he informs the older angel quietly.

With that simple piece of information, Arakiel realizes that Malachi had no intention of offering him protection; the execution of the Winchesters was to bring the wrath of an archangel upon Bartholomew's faction, not to sic a community of ineffectual human hunters on them.  And without making any effort to hide his identity, he would have been writing his own death warrant in the brother's blood.

Considering that, he sheathes his sword and turns his wings outward in a show of submission. 

"Indeed."

Neither move as they consider the situation and their positions.  Arakiel is waiting for Castiel to accept his gesture, but the archangel remains untrusting.

He cocks his head to the side, "And your intentions now?"

Arakiel adopts a grammatical structure that is slightly below what he had been using, but still indicates a pride in his own power and position.  He chooses his words carefully, wanting to convey a very specific meaning,  

"To... _discuss_ the situation with Malachi, the one who truly sent me on this fool's errand.  Perhaps after that, I may seek your forgiveness and protection."

Castiel considers that for a moment before partially folding his wings back in a sign of guarded acceptance.  He tucks away his sword but stays between the other angel and his human charges.  From behind him, he hears Dean groan "What the fuck, Cas!"

"I look forward to discussing it with you," Castiel continues in Enochian, ignoring the fact that his lover seems to want him to smite the other angel into dust.

Arakiel gestures for Allison to join him, and she eagerly hurries down the shallow steps to join him.  He leans in to whisper a question in her ear, and with a nod and a quiet, barely voiced "yes", she accepts his brilliant, blinding what grace to her body.

She nods to the other vessel, which has slipped limply to the snowy ground, then says, "I will leave my other vessel with you as a sign of my good faith.  Collateral, if you will.  As you can no doubt see, neither is strong enough to contain me for long... so it is essential that I should keep both."

She pauses and looks at Gadreel in a way that makes Sam bristle. The angel is paging through Allison's knowledge of the blond and considering his strength as a vessel.  However, knowing of his devotion to the younger Winchester, she says nothing.

Castiel nods, "When you call me, do so far from the humans I protect; I don't want you near them."

"As you wish," she says with a slight bow.  And without another word, the angel vanishes, leaving the hunters wondering what had happened between the two angels.

There is a long pause before Sam steps around Gadreel to crouch beside the unconscious man that Arakiel had been wearing.

"I'm sorry, Sam," Gadreel says quietly, "I didn't know about Allison."

"It's fine, don't worry bout that - she had us all fooled," the hunter says, shaking his head.  He presses his fingers to the unconscious man's neck then nods to himself when he picks out the delicate throb of his pulse.

"So what the hell was that?" Dean asks irritably.

Castiel pauses for a moment as he replays the conversation in his thoughts, running it through the filter of what a human would be able to comprehend.  Between the Enochian and the posturing on planes that weren't within human perception, he realizes that his companions hadn't really gotten anything out of that exchange at all.

Gadreel helpfully supplies, "He backed down because Castiel is an archangel, and also because..." 

He looks at Castiel uncertainly as he continued, his brow furrowed slightly as he tries to translate it all correctly, "Malachi tricked him?"

Castiel smiles encouragingly, pleased at his brother's lingering comprehension of his native language.  He nods and lightly touches the back of Gadreel's shoulder, "Yes, and I am impressed that you understood that, even in the more advanced forms."

The blond is about to reply when Dean demands, “Tricked him how?  What the hell is going on? ‘Cause where I’m standing it looks like he dropped one meatsuit at the dry cleaner, picked up another, and fucked off.”

The archangel sighs, “It’s not compl-”

“Guys, I do care what happened, I really do, but can we get this poor guy out of the snow?”  Sam asks from Dean’s feet, where he is struggling to pick up the broad-shouldered man that Arakiel had left behind.

Groaning in annoyance, Dean crouches down and helps his brother lift up the unconscious vessel, “Jesus, fuck.  I just want to know what the hell just happened.”

Gadreel and Castiel exchange a brief, knowing look.  They both have ideas about Arakiel, but both are willing to consider possibilities that they doubt that the Winchesters will like.  A certain amount of framing would be necessary to put this into a neutral light, and it would be better handled by both siblings after a solid night’s sleep.  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this section. I always like to post the end of one fic along with the start of the next so that people can find and subscribe the continuation more easily. :) So on that note, the start of 10-4: Bad Company is now available!
> 
> Just some thoughts on this fic: 
> 
> Dean's PTSD is something that I think needs to be dealt with more, and it is something that will come up in small ways in some of the other fics in this series. Where Sam has lost his memories of the Pit, Dean is not only living with his memories of what was done to him in Hell, but what he did to others. I think that is integral to his personality and not the sort of thing that can be completely dismissed. He was in Hell longer than he has been alive on earth! There are still a lot of things that he is working through, and the fact that he can't remember being rescued is something that has always bothered him. It also has ramifications for his relationship with Cas, and those are things that the two need to deal with as well... particularly now that Dean knows that Michael is to blame for the missing time. 
> 
> This section was lighter on Sam/Gadreel because I thought they'd been hogging the spotlight a bit in the last few fics... and the Dean/Cas and Dean/Sam interactions needed a stronger focus. A lot of people accuse Destiel shippers of disliking Sam and not valuing the brothers' relationship... but I just love Sam and I want him to have as much development, particularly in terms of his relationship with his brother, as he needs. 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading! Please feel free to give me suggestions, requests, or feedback. :)


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